


Mandate of the Goddess

by AirDoodles



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Fantasy, Historical, Original Character(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-10 10:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 50,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6981334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirDoodles/pseuds/AirDoodles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An exiled prince. An orphaned girl. A pirate lord. And 3,000 years of dynastic rule on the line. </p>
<p>A coup d'etat sends crown prince, Yixing, into exile by stowing away on a trading vessel. When the ship is wrecked, however, Yixing and fellow stow-away, Xiaohe, are taken hostage by Captain Lau, the most feared pirate on the Southern Seas. But when an ancient prophecy offers both the prince his life back and enough wealth for a thief lord to retire from a life of piracy, Captain Lau and Yixing join forces to hunt down a string of priceless pearls and voyage to the realm of the Sea Goddess with the Revolution hot on their tails.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Palm Reader

Normally, The Blue Parrot brothel and gambling den — the most popular one in Ash Town— didn’t open for business until the evening, but the owner made a special exception for when Luo Zhixiang decided to visit a bit earlier with the Crown Prince in tow. The men clambered in through the door unannounced and immediately, Luo Zhixiang began calling out the names of his favorite courtesans. The owner of the brothel was a tall, thin, grasshopper-like woman who went by the name Madam Rui. She had been seated at a mahjong table with three other women when the bachelors came in. She had stamped out a cigarette on a dinner platter and then stood to meet them.

“My girls won’t serve a couple of imbecilic illiterates!” she had shouted. These men obviously couldn’t read or they’d have noticed the sign by the doorway indicating The Blue Parrot’s hours of business. But once she was close enough, she staggered back. Lou Zhixiang was a frequent customer of her brothel, but the young man walking slightly behind him was new, and yet intimidatingly familiar. When the answer struck her, she inhaled sharply.

“Your Highness,” the woman said, her face becoming ashy and pale with shock at the sight. Immediately, everyone else in the room stood and then bowed deeply at the waist. Zhixiang scoffed while Yixing smiled politely and nodded.

“Forgive me, my liege,” Madam Rui said, not daring to look up. “I did not recognize you.”

“It’s no trouble, madam,” he said. 

Having been called by fancy titles and names all his life, Yixing was used to the “Your Highnesses” and “My lieges,” but it still felt oddly burdensome. Especially to be called so by a woman like Madam Rui, who looked as old as the universe and would dissolve at any moment and yet looked tough enough to beat him in a wrestling match at the same time. It was no surprise that she didn’t recognize him. He had snuck out of the Palace after procuring a set of peasants’ clothes from Zhixiang. Without his usual outfit of silk or brocade or intricate embroidery and woven golden thread, Yixing was a surprisingly — even painfully — average-looking young man. The only thing tying him to his royal heritage at this moment was the ring on his right hand. A gold signet with the Prince’s Seal on the bezel, which featured the characters forming his name flanked by two horned demons. Which he wore more out of a sense of guilt or obligation more than pride. 

“What amazes me,” Zhixiang said after they had been seated on a pair of couches further inside the establishment. “Is that you still come to The Blue Parrot even though the Palace harem has more beautiful women than any you could find here.”

The girl with her leg slung across Zhixiang’s lap struck his chest. “If that’s really how you think, then what are you doing here?” she whined. Yixing laughed but was suddenly surprised when he felt another pair of arms linking up to his. When he turned, he found another girl sitting beside him. Both women were wearing tight dresses with slits that went up the sides of their thighs. Zhixiang’s girl wore blue, and his wore green. When she smiled, it was charming, but it also reminded Yixing of a rabbit because of her teeth.

“Perhaps His Majesty comes to enjoy the riveting conversation, of course,” the girl said, her voice as high and melodic as a bell. Zhixiang laughed. In the corner of the room, Madam Rui had summoned an erhu player to provide some mood music, and Yixing could hear the commotion in the kitchens as Madam Rui shouted at the staff to cook something quickly. 

“I’m not ‘Your Majesty’ yet. And beside, you get tired of those Palace concubines pretty quickly,” Yixing answered. “Especially when you stop and consider that your father’s probably been with each and every one of them. Not exactly the most effective turn-on, don’t you think?”

“Your old man’s got game, I’ll give him that,” Zhixiang joked as the girl on his lap snuggled closer to him. “But don’t worry. A couple more years and it’ll be your harem instead of his.”

“And when that time comes, I hope you’ll remember me, Your Highness,” the girl beside him said. “I’ve never been to the Palace before. It must be beautiful inside.”

“Not nearly as beautiful as the two of you, however,” Zhixiang said, and the girl on his lap smacked him again for being corny. Yixing laughed a little.

“I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Yixing said. His cheerful spirits fell a little. “The Palace complex has over 500 buildings, was constructed originally about 3000 years ago, now, has survived hundreds of attacks, gone through countless renovations, and it looks like a Heavenly City on the Hill. If people think that’s beautiful, who am I to argue?”

Zhixiang groaned. “I hate when you get philosophical.”

Yixing laughed. “But it also depends on the vantage point. From the inside, I can tell you, ‘beautiful’ isn’t always the first word that comes to mind.”

“Then what does come to your mind?” the girl asked seductively. Yixing swallowed, trying to think of a word.

“‘Control,’ perhaps,” he said. The girl giggled.

“But isn’t control a good thing?” she asked. “Your family’s dynasty could hardly last these 3,000 years if they didn’t exercise a little control.”

Yixing shrugged. “Depends on who is doing the controlling, I guess. Or who is being controlled.”

The girl smiled, her plump red lips flattening into a line. “You will be the one in control soon,” she said.

“What are you blabbering on about, now?” Zhixiang jumped in. “Is this about the Mountain Princess again?”

Yixing looked at Zhixiang and was speechless. The older man scoffed.

“I should have known you were just running away again,” Zhixiang said, just as a waitress came over with a tray of food and drink and began arranging them on the table in front of the men. “For a moment, when you asked me to take you to The Blue Parrot, I thought you were serious. I should have known better than to think I could corrupt you, oh Great One. What’s this about then? What did I just break the rules to help you do?” 

Yixing pulled on the sleeves of his shirt nervously. “Nothing serious,” he said. “Though it does concern the Mountain Princess. My father wants me to give my permission to make the proposal today. He can’t make me do it if I’m not there.”

Zhixiang pushed the girl in blue aside for a moment to lean forward and look the prince in the eye. “You’re already at that stage, then?” he asked. “I don’t understand. I’ve heard nothing but wildly-spun tales of her cleverness and beauty, what’s holding you back?”

“Well, one, I’ve never met her before,” Yixing protested. “And, two, this is all just a ruse to get me to do more ‘kingly’ duties. He’s not even in his grave yet and already, he’s trying to make me do his job for him.”

“Isn’t that what princes are supposed to do, though?” Zhixiang asked. “Fill in for the king whenever he can?”

Yixing pursed his lips. “I know you think I’m being petty and ridiculous, but you don’t know my father like I do. And I… I don’t want to be like him. I don’t want to listen to what he has to say or what he has to teach me. A lot of good it did him, did it? I don’t think so.”

“Oh, please, Yixing,” Zhixiang said. “Not more of those mopey prince act. I, for one, agree with your father this once. It’s time you grew up and grew into your destiny.” 

“My destiny?” Yixing asked. The girls holding onto their arms had grown silent, feeling too awkward and unknowledgeable to contribute to the conversation but desperate to bring the atmosphere back to cheerful. Zhixiang shifted in his seat. 

“In just a few weeks’ time, it’ll be the 3,000th year of your family dynasty,” Zhixiang said. “Your ancestors built the greatest empire on earth from the ground up, and 3,000 years later, it survives. It’s almost time for you to continue that legacy. That’s your destiny isn’t it?”

Before Yixing could formulate an answer, the girls started to giggle again, eager to change the subject and make light of the situation once again. 

“All this talk of the future and destiny, honestly, who even knows what’s to come?” one girl said. “I say that the best time to live is in the present. Everything behind us and ahead could be just an hallucination for all we know.”

“I have an idea,” the other girl said, batting her eyelashes. “Let’s have our palms read!”

“Our palms read?” Zhixiang asked. “Well well well, my dear one, I had no idea you were as talented as that.”

The girl pushed at his arm. “Not me, stupid,” she teased. The waitress had just finished arranging the plates on the table when the girl reached out and tapped her arm. The waitress looked up with a single raised eyebrow and then stood with the tray held sideways with both hands. The courtesans smiled.

“This waitress reads palms,” the blue-clad courtesan said. “Whatever it is about your destiny you’re curious about, all she has to do is take a look at your hand to lay all your worries to rest.”

“Really now?” Zhixiang asked, leaning forward in curiosity. The waitress in question looked to be about the same age as the two courtesans, or perhaps a few years younger. She had long hair, plaited down her back, and wore a dark blue blouse and trousers that gave off the smell of grease and smoke. 

“And where did you pick up this unique talent?” Zhixiang asked. 

Most peasants were the same: shy, unable to look anyone in the eye for longer than a few seconds. And quiet. But the waitress looked both Yixing and Zhixiang in the eye and held her head up with distinction. The men were almost impressed. 

“From my mother, sir,” the waitress answered. Her voice was somewhat deep for a girl, just high enough it could belong to a teenaged boy. Zhixiang laughed a little and then turned to the girl next to him.

“Interesting development,” he said, complimenting the courtesan by his side. He turned to Yixing. “Has the Diviner at the Palace ever read your palm?”

Yixing shrugged. “I don’t think she reads palms. Or if she does, she’s never read mine.”

“Well, then, here’s your chance!” Zhixiang said. “My friend would like his palms read, please, miss.”

The waitress looked between he four people seated on the couches and then at the kitchen staff behind her. “I have work to do, sir, and my shift will be ending soon—,”

“Aww, come on! Just do his, then, I can come back another time and have mine read, but if the Palace Guard finds him here, you might never see him again! Go on, read his palm!”

The waitress looked at Yixing, as though for permission though there was no demure question in her gaze. Yixing sighed and relented. After freeing his arm from the grasp of the courtesan by his side, he stretched his left hand out to her. The waitress let the tray rest against the table and then walked up to Yixing. When she was close enough, however, she pushed his hand away. 

“Your right hand, please,” she said. The courtesans scoffed at the rudeness of her tone, but Yixing quietly obliged, stretching his other hand out to her. She took his hand into her slightly smaller ones and then look earnestly down at his palm. Her eyes scanned his palm for just a few seconds before she spoke.

“This line here,” she said, tracing the line that ran from the base of the wrist to the space between his thumb and index finger. “This is the Life Line, it can tell you about the kinds of encounters and experiences you will have in your life. Yours is long and deep, this means that you have robust health and are full of vitality.”

Zhixiang reached for a cup of wine and laughed. “We already knew that, though—,”

“However,” the waitress said, putting them all on the edge of their seats. She followed the line to the left side of the base of his palm, where the Life Line split in two. “The line is forked here, at the Lunar Mount. This means you will experience a great, cataclysmic change in your life, a change that will take you to far corners of the globe, beyond the sea.”

“Of course, he’ll be king someday,” Zhixiang said. “He’ll have to go on long, diplomatic journeys in the future!”

Yixing shushed Zhixiang and the courtesans moved in closer to get a better look at his palm. The waitress straightened out his fingers and inspected the lines more deeply. She pointed to another line closer to the base of his fingers.

“This here,” she explained, pointing to the helix-shaped line. “This shows that you are undergoing great personal conflict with yourself. You’re struggling against expectation and obligation.”

“Right on the money!” Zhixiang said, playfully elbowing the courtesan on his arm. Yixing only stared blankly at the chained line, mouth partly open. 

“The Heart Line is broken here at the beginning,” the waitress continued. “Suggesting you suffer from or will suffer from great emotional trauma, perhaps related to familial relationships. The Venus Mount here, it means you are well-suited to leadership but are unwilling to take the challenge.”

She paused for a moment and looked the prince in the eye. She narrowed her own.

“Perhaps you suffer emotionally because you cannot reconcile what you see about a person and what you want to believe,” she said. “At least judging by this line here, which shows that you are naive and inexperienced, but also easily affected by evil around you. And this here—,”

She ran a fingernail lightly against the line that ran straight down from the base of the middle finger to the connection to his wrist. Yixing shivered a bit at the contact but dared not lift his eyes from his palm.

“The Fate Line,” she said. “Reveals the nature of your destiny.”

“What is it? What does it mean?” he prompted. He looked up at her with an almost desperate expression. She bit the inside of her cheek and looked down at the line, which ran long and deep, like a chasm beneath the ocean. 

“It begins here, on the curve of the Life Line. Fragmented. You began your journey unstably. You’re confused and frustrated because you are not in control of your destiny. Then it crosses the Heart Line here, breaking it. Your destiny may have devastating impact on your interpersonal relationships. Taking everything into account, your fortune—,”

“Alright, alright, enough of this,” Zhixiang said, grabbing Yixing’s hand and yanking out of the waitress’ clutch. Yixing drew his hand back, but the waitress’ words still danced around in his head. Words like “destiny” and “devastation,” “trauma” and “challenge.” The other girls began to whine.

“She was just about to get to the good part!” 

“She didn’t even get to say anything about what his future marriage would be like!”

“You really believe in all that soothsaying mumbo jumbo?” Zhixiang said, laughing and taking another sip of beer. Yixing felt a flush of second-hand embarrassment on the palm-reading waitress’ behalf, but when he looked at her, she didn’t seem offended at all. She picked up the tray and just gave the seated party a nod.

The green-clad courtesan offered her palm to the girl.

“Do mine next,” she said. But the waitress just point up at the clock on the wall.

“My shift is over,” she said. “Palm reading isn’t part of the usual service, too.”

Zhixiang laughed.

“What?” he said. “Do you actually expect us to compensate you for spilling out a load of bull and molesting my friend’s hand? You must be out of your goddamn mind. Get me a refill of this wine before you clock out, peasant!” 

“She’s right,” Yixing said, reaching into his pockets for money of any kind. “We did pull her away from her job. We ought to give a little bit.”

“Yixing!” Zhixiang said, standing up. “Put that back in your wallet! You don’t need to pay her anything, she just made something up about your palm! It’s not fair to these lovely ladies who sat with us the entire time!”

“They’ll get some as well,” Yixing said as he reached out and handed a bill to the waitress. She said nothing in reply. Just bowed in thanks and then returned to the kitchen. Yixing sat back on the couch, still unconsciously rubbing his palm as Zhixiang carried on flirting with the other girls. So much of what the palm reader said hit so close to home. 

His struggle with his family’s expectations and his obligations as prince, especially. 

It wasn’t that Yixing was unwilling to accept his responsibility as King. He just felt that he was not yet the man for the job. There was much to learn, much to do before he could possibly be ready to accept the crown. And even after accepting it, there would be much to do. His father, the sitting Emperor of the Twin Demons Empire, was not just a man, he was a mythical beast, and not for entirely the best reasons. He was a war-hero and an iron-grip leader who dealt with external threats using force and intimidation, and he dealt with his own people in much the same way. 

Put another way, he was the opposite of Yixing, to a degree that was almost shameful. Where his father was a valorous and draconian king who loved to brave the elements and hunt down glory and slay monsters, Yixing was a studious prince who preferred to spend his time conversing with the learned women of the Palace court or composing music or practicing archery in the courtyard. 

Still, he felt embarrassed. Even a complete stranger could see that he was a coward when it came to his responsibilities. If he was ever to change himself, he would have to start now.

Yixing stood up from the couch and turned to Zhixiang. The girls were surprised at the sudden movement. 

“What’s wrong?” Zhixiang asked. Yixing shrugged.

“I’m going back to the Palace,” Yixing answered. “You’re right, I’m being ridiculous.”

Zhixiang leaned forward. “So you’ll propose to the Princess of the Mountain Kingdom, then?”

“I don’t know yet,” Yixing said. “I’m not there, yet. All I’m saying is I’ll go back and talk to my father about it. You stay here, you seem to be enjoying yourself.”

Zhixiang laughed but agreed to the terms anyway. The girls whined again about the young prince leaving so soon, and Yixing calmed their complaints by promising to be back. He reached into his pocket to dig out another bill to give to Zhixiang to cover the food expenses. The Prince of the Twin Demons Empire was just about to hand the money over to his friend when he caught sight of his own hand and the blood drained from his face. The bill dropped to the floor.

“What?” Zhixiang asked, scooping the money from the floor and looking to the prince. Yixing felt up his pockets. His eyes scanned the couch he’d been sitting in and then the floor, asking the girls to lift their feet for a moment. 

“What are you looking for?” Zhixiang asked.

“My ring!” Yixing said. “My gold signet ring! The one with the royal seal on it!”

“God in heaven,” Zhixiang cursed, scanning the floor as well. “Are you sure you even wore it out? You sure you didn’t take it off to complete your disguise?”

“I was wearing it!” Yixing said, lifting the cushion from the couch. “Damn it.”

“Did you take it off or anything?” Zhixiang said. “Check your pockets?”

“It’s not in my pocket!” Yixing said, his voice growing panicked.

“You sure it’s not on your other hand?” Zhixiang joked, trying to make light of the situation. Yixing groaned, getting down on his knees to scour the ground for any sign of his royal seal. 

“It belongs on my right hand,” Yixing explained. Zhixiang was in the middle of asking the courtesans sitting beside him if they had cheekily snatched it from the prince’s finger when Yixing was struck by a thought.

“The palm reader.”

He barely had time to make eye contact with Zhixiang when a shadow appeared in the corner of his eye, and when he turned to it, he saw the waitress in question walking toward the exit. When she reached the doorway, she felt a pair of eyes on her. She turned and met the prince’s gaze. 

And then she bolted out the door.

“Hey!” Yixing shouted. He jumped onto his feet and dashed out the door after her. 

Yixing stumbled on his way out the door. After pulling back the flaps covering the doorway and entering the street again, he was blinded by the sunlight momentarily. After his sight returned, he looked right and then left. Out of the darkness of The Blue Parrot and into the chaos of the street, he was momentarily disoriented. But then on his left, there was the sound of a crashing bicycle and the sight of a plaited queue dashing out of sight. Yixing bolted after her.

“Stop!” he shouted, chasing her. “Thief!”

Yixing dodged a man selling buns, a merchant pushing a barrel, schoolchildren, jumped and then crashed into an old woman carrying a sack of rice. And as much as he wanted to slow down, he absolutely could not let that girl steal the Royal Seal of the Prince. She was fast and agile, much more so than he. No doubt from a lifetime spent running through these alleys. It was midday and the market was in full swing, making it all the more difficult for the prince to keep a visual on the thief. 

She was ducking beneath tables and flying through spaces in between buildings. Yixing couldn’t keep up with her, but he did his best. He was pushing and shoving his way through the crowd, trying to keep up with the girl with the braid.

“Stop!” he shouted after her. “Come back here! Give back what you stole!”

She didn’t even stop to shout back. She was far too nimble for him to catch. Perspiration stuck to his clothing. He had crashed into at least ten people. The market was in an uproar over the whole ordeal. Still, he gave chase.

“Stop!” Yixing saw her disappear through a narrow street and run in the opposite direction. He ran after her. Through the garment district, into and through a shop selling brushes, behind a fish stall, around the corner and—

The chase came to an abrupt stop when Yixing found himself crashing into an immovable object and being thrown back by the force of the collision. Funnily enough, the object he crashed into didn’t move an inch. When he finally came to back to his senses and looked up at the object he had crashed into, he was shocked to see the Captain of the Guard standing there. 

“Captain Huang,” Yixing said. 

The Captain was not a very intimidating man. He looked more suited to be a family man than a military man. He wore the official uniform of the Palace Guards, which consisted of black trousers and a shirt of dark green brocade, held together by a crimson sash embroidered with a white lion mid-stride. The horizontal scar beneath his left eye was more telling of his affiliation than the uniform, however. Each of the other ten lower-ranked guards behind Captain Huang also boasted scars beneath their left eyes. 

Captain Huang grabbed Yixing by the front of his clothes. Unlike the other Palace employees, Captain Huang had no problems treating the heir to the Empire with a little physical roughness. 

“Where have you been?” the Captain demanded. Yixing was still out of breath, too much to answer properly.

“I was on my way to the Palace,” Yixing said.

“Have you any idea how long we have been searching for you?” Captain Huang asked, releasing the prince and letting him fall back into the dust road. 

“Shifu,” Yixing said, calling the Captain by the affectionate nickname that prince had given him when he was learning archery from the captain. But Captain Huang didn’t drop his angry tone.

“This is the third time this week!” the captain shouted, his thick brows slanting into a scowl. Yixing felt afraid for some reason. “Do you think the Palace Guards are your babysitters? You have responsibilities at the Palace. When will you grow up?”

Yixing pushed himself off the ground and began to dust himself off.

“Where’s Luo Zhixiang?” Captain Huang demanded. “I know he helped you with this. Where is he? Where have you been?”

“I can explain,” Yixing said, though he wasn’t looking forward to the Captain’s reaction when he told him he’d been to The Blue Parrot. Even worse would be the Captain’s reaction upon learning what happened to his ring. 

 

—

 

The Palace Guards had put Yixing onto a horse, hoping it would elevate his sense of dignity as they rode through the slummy alleys of Ash Town, but it remained the most humiliating walk of shame Yixing had ever taken in his life. Still, Captain Huang insisted that it would be unacceptable for the people to see him in such a state, the least they could do was put him on horse. After relaying the events that transpired at The Blue Parrot, the captain was, expectedly, livid, but he saw no other solution to the problem than to return to the brothel and demand to see the owner to retrieve Yixing’s signet ring. 

As Yixing’s horse trotted through the streets, the crowds cleared, making a path for him and the entourage of Palace Guards behind and ahead of him. Everyone sunk down to their knees and touched their foreheads to the ground or bowed deeply at the waist. Yixing was still too worried about his missing ring to play up to his usual princely charm, however. Captain Huang Lei rode the horse to Yixing’s side and he kept his eyes ahead, scanning the crowd for threats to the prince’s safety. Yixing watched the captain and tried to think of a proper way to apologize for his behavior later. 

After running into the Palace Guard troupe, Yixing had completely lost his visual on the palm-reading thief. He was hoping that the captain was right and she had probably returned to the brothel. 

The sign hanging outside the brothel came into view. It was an unmissable gold cage hanging just above the doorway with a wooden parrot painted cerulean perched inside. The flaps of fabric covering the doorway flew open just as Yixing’s entourage rode up to the building. It was one of the cooks from the kitchen, and his hands were holding a girl’s arms back as he pushed her toward the Palace Guards. She was shouting in protest.

“Let me go! Ouch! Let go of me!” she was shouting. Her plait had come undone and heavy, wavy locks of black hair covered part of her face. The cook kicked at the back of her knees to make her kowtow in front of the prince and his riding party. Madam Rui walked out of the brothel soon after, and a few courtesans poked their heads out of the windows and doors. The rest of the street was crowded with bystanders and onlookers. The mistress of the brothel bowed before Yixing’s horse.

“Your Highness,” she implored. “Even the deepest apology I can offer will never be enough to earn your forgiveness of this atrocious trespass! I assure you, I am humiliated by this! A thief! In my brothel! It has never happened before, and never will again! She will be punished accordingly! I—,”

“Good,” Yixing said, trying to hurry along. “If I can have back what was stolen, please.”

Madam Rui snapped her fingers and the cook pushed the girl onto her feet and then pushed her closer to the captain’s horse. Then, he grabbed one of her hands and forced her to stretch it out to him. As her fingers unfurled, the gold of the ring caught the sunlight, and a murmur rippled through the crowd. Captain Huang took the ring from the girl and inspected it before handing it over to Yixing. Madam Rui, evidently unfinished with her dramatic monologue, was back before Yixing’s horse.

“Your Highness,” she said. “Please, allow me to present you with a gift to repair the damaged trust.”

“No need,” Yixing said, attempting to grab the reins and turn the horse around, but in the next moment, Madam Rui snapped her fingers again, and one of the courtesans stepped out from the brothel. She was dressed in an orange qipao, her hair arranged like a flower atop her head and she kept her demure eyes to the ground. Yixing could sense the guards shifting.

“Please,” Madam Rui said. “Allow me to supply the Palace harem with another courtesan.”

“That won’t be necessary—,” Yixing said, blushing a bit, but his words were cut off by the sound of the thief struggling against the cook again. Madam Rui turned and shouted.

“Shut up!” Madam Rui shouted. “First, you offend the prince and now you shame me! Hold your tongue!”

“You hold your own!” the girl shouted before the cook pull her back again. 

“Are you aware,” Captain Huang said, directing his words at the girl thief. “That stealing from the prince is a crime punishable by lashing? And to steal his signet ring, punishable by death?”

This was the only time the girl looked up. Her expression was defiant, but she didn’t speak a word. Madam Rui spoke again. 

“Shall I hand the thief over to your guards, Your Highness?” she asked. “To be tried and punished accordingly?”

Yixing sighed and looked down at his ring. And then he looked back at the captain and at the girl. He grabbed the reins of the horse and began to turn it away.

“No need,” Yixing said. “I have what I came for. Leave her be. Let’s go.”

The crowd shuffled aside once more, making room for the prince to pass through. The guards followed, and the women of The Blue Parrot brothel held their breaths as Yixing left their alley.


	2. Destiny Calls

The cook dragged the girl back into The Blue Parrot and Madam Rui instructed him to bring her into the back room by the kitchen. Xiaohe struggled against the man’s grip the entire time. The women of the brothel all looked on at her with disparaging eyes, lined with kohl and their usual smugness. Madam Rui followed them to the back room. The cook let Xiaohe fall back against the floor, but before Xiaohe could even realize what was happening, Madam Rui had backhand slapped her across the face. 

“You ungrateful wretch!” Madam Rui shouted. “How dare you do this to me! How dare you humiliate me like this?”

“I was going to give it back to him!” Xiaohe shouted, cradling her face where she’d been slapped. “Eventually! I wasn’t going to keep it, I was going to ransom it—”

“Eventually!” Madam Rui shouted. “The one time the prince walks into _my_ brothel, _you_ attempt to rob him! Have you no respect for royalty? Have you no fear of what could happen to you? You are lucky that the prince was merciful!”

Xiaohe flinched when the woman came after her and grabbed a fistful of her hair. The other girls began to file into the room, looking on with blank stares as their mistress unleashed her anger on the little virgin waitress. Xiaohe could bet three months’ wages that they were enjoying this, seeing the insolent upstart of a waitress receiving her just desserts. 

“How dare you do this to me? To my girls? To my establishment?” the woman shouted. “After all these years, I fed you and clothed you, let you stay in your mother’s old room! You won’t even take a single client in return—“

“I pay you rent every month!” Xiaohe shouted in reply.

“You pay _part_ of your rent every month! You think serving a few drinks and reading palms is going to cover what is has cost me to keep you off the streets all these years?”

Madame Rui backed away a little bit, but there was still a wild, raging look in her eyes. 

“Your mother was a good whore, but not good enough to overlook a trespass such as this!” she continued. “Do you know how much I lose, renting a room to you when I could have one of the girls take care of their clients in it? Yet you refuse to join your sisters, and instead you rob princes and drive clients away and put on airs like the Queen of Sheba. We are all in the gutter, why can’t you just accept your place—“

“Perhaps you and your whores belong in the gutter, but I don’t! I robbed the prince, but at least—”

“You think you have some kind of monopoly on misery?” one of the other girls spoke up. A murmur spread among the girls looking on at Xiaohe. They all despised the arrogant, holier-than-thou manner with which Xiaohe regarded them, ignorant of her own place in society. “Look around you, you are exactly like us!”

Xiaohe held back angry tears.

“I’m nothing like any of you!” she shouted. “You all might be fine bowing and scraping and sleeping your way through life, but that’s not the life for me!”

“Well, then if that’s how you feel, then maybe you should leave,” Madame Rui said. Xiaohe was stunned silent. She looked into the woman’s face and inwardly panicked at the lack of jest in her tone. Xiaohe swallowed.

“You don’t mean that,” Xiaohe whispered.

“You said so yourself you don’t belong here, and you’re right. Where you belong is out on the street. Get out!” Madame Rui grabbed fistfuls of Xiaohe’s shirt and yanked her toward the door. Xiaohe protested and fought against her grip. For a moment, she tore herself free from the woman’s grasp, but the other girls had joined in. They shouted and hit her as two of the strongest women grabbed her by the arms and shoved Xiaohe out the door. She landed sprawled on the dirt ground while onlookers cast uninterested glances at her. Xiaohe turned and looked back.

“Wait!” she shouted, but Madame Rui had already slammed the door shut. A minute later, she looked up and saw a window opening and things started to rain down into the street. Xiaohe recognized her things being tossed out of the window of her room. She scrambled to catch the items as they fell, but others were ruined as they crashed to the ground. A music box. Clothing landed in puddles or were trampled by passersby. Shoes were thrown down like projectiles, one hit Xiaohe on the shoulder. Even the vase that held a single flower was tossed out and was shattered when it hit the ground. Books fell from the sky. A wooden box of her mother’s old things.

Xiaohe was only able to salvage a shirt or two from being ruined, and she gathered up a few of the books in her arms. One of the last items to be thrown out was a cap. Navy blue with a faded, gold, braided rope connected around the visor. A sailor’s cap. 

Xiaohe wanted to run up to the door of The Blue Parrot and kick it down and start up a fuss again, but in the end, she found herself too tired, and the end result not worth the effort. She sighed and picked up the cap from the ground and put it on her head. Looking down at her scattered, ruined belongings she felt almost embarrassed at how little she owned. Clutching the bundle of clothing and books, she decided that the rest was not worth saving.

Around her, the bustle of the alleyway paid little attention to the poor, scrappy young girl who’d been cast out of the brothel. It was just another day in Ash Town for these people. Another day, another miserable soul flung further down the social ladder. Today, it was Xiaohe. Tomorrow, someone else. Xiaohe turned and began walking down the alley, kicking the broken music box as she passed it. 

 

—

 

It was late afternoon by the time Xiaohe decided that she had to find a place to stay for the night. After visiting several other brothels, she realized her mother’s connections would be of no more help to her. Too many years had passed between now and when her mother had been the most sought-after courtesan in Ash Town, and many of the brothels were under new management and had no recollection of Han Huilan, the Beauty Queen of the Twin Demons Empire. And for Han Xiaohe, being her daughter was of no further consequence to them. Other brothel owners simply had no intention of taking a girl in if she wasn’t planning on taking clients. 

Xiaohe found herself at the harbor, as she usually did when she had a lot to think about or a crisis to deal with. From the dock where she sat herself down, she could see the Palace, peaking out from behind the trees on the hilltop, a deep, shimmering red city with one watchful eye over the land and another over the sea. Xiaohe dropped her things down beside her as she swung her legs over the side of the dock, letting her feet dangle just above the water. It was late spring in the Kingdom of the Twin Demons, and although most peasants in the capital kept no calendar, they could tell by the smell of the mist that came in from the ocean. During the colder months, the air smelled like rusted metal, smoke, and heavy industry. It was thin and cold and stung the nostrils. But in spring and summer, the air thickened, and the scent of salt and algae sweetened the breeze. This part of the harbor, nearest Ash Town, was closest to the trading centers. Small junks and rowboats bobbed close together on the marina while an assembly line of men loaded them up with supplies to be taken to the larger vessel, which had dropped anchor further out. 

There was something about the harbor and watching the crew men loading and unloading a merchant ship — with their grunts and shouts and uniforms and the rugged look about their faces — that made Xiaohe feel oddly peaceful. Perhaps it was the uniformity with which they all worked. Side-by-side, an assembly line of people with a unified goal, living together on a ship. Surviving. 

Having grown up in and out of the brothels, streets, and slums of the Capital, Xiaohe knew a thing or two about survival. She’d survived the childhood years spent begging on street corners; sewing new soles onto old shoes and selling them at jacked-up prices; the almost-kidnappings, the almost-rapes, the almost-murders; had survived the years and years of being asked by Madam Rui when she planned on joining the other girls in their “important work”, servicing the men of the Capital; had survived many dangerous odd jobs, working in kitchens and factories. Had survived those nights she and her mother had to sleep out in the cold streets of Ash Town. Had survived the illnesses and the fevers and the countless minor injuries. 

Soon, life for Xiaohe wasn’t life at all: it was just an endless cycle of trying not to die for 24 hours. She didn’t often feel sorry for herself. There was never time to wallow in pity or think about what might have been had her father not left. 

Xiaohe looked back at the pile of her belongings and glanced at the sailor cap at the top of the pile. She took it in her hand and held it up so that the brim of the hat sat above the horizon. When she was a young girl, Xiaohe used to cry thinking about the mysterious man who left her and her mother to fend for themselves at The Blue Parrot. He disappeared before she was old enough to have any real memories about him. In her head, he was a faceless man in a sailor’s uniform. The stories her mother told her about him didn’t always make sense. Descriptions of him and his character were often inconsistent and changed depending on her mother’s mood that day. If it was a good day, and her mother had entertained an especially kind client, she’d comment that he was sweet like Xiaohe’s father or handsome like Xiaohe’s father. Other times, when she was having one of _those_ days, when she shouted her head off and tore up their bedroom and terrorized her young daughter, she would curse “that man” and call him an evil demon who abandoned them. It went on that way until Xiaohe’s father was more of a mythical creature than actual person.

But whenever things got especially bad, rather than curse the disappeared man, Xiaohe liked to think that she was only able to survive because she had inherited some positive qualities from him. Heaven knew that she didn’t get her fighting spirit from her mother, who chose an early exit out of this life and left Xiaohe completely alone. She looked beyond the cap at the wide, vast expanse of ocean and thought about how, somewhere beyond the Kingdom of the Twin Demons, there was an honorable man with quite a lot of explaining to do. She took the cap away and glanced at her open palm. 

There it was. Her broken and forked Life Line. Xiaohe had always interpreted the broken line to mean that she would be very seriously sick at least once in her lifetime. And she had been. When she was young, she remembered being confined to bed for days with a high fever that eventually broke, but not before giving her mother a scare that she’d die. But the fork in the line meant that she’d eventually leave this place and travel far and away.

Xiaohe often came to the harbor and watched the ships coming in and out, envious of the places they would go and the places they had been. There was nothing left for her here in Ash Town. Deep down, she knew her destiny hinged upon her escape. But when would that be?

“Captain!” shouted one of the men of the crew. Xiaohe’s ears perked up at the sound. She watched as two members of the crew approached a man in a captain’s uniform. “We’d like to report missing a crew member!”

The captain looked disturbed. “Report it, then, sir,” the captain said. 

“It appears, sir, that the cabin boy has disappeared,” the man reported. “No one has sighted the lad for at least a week.”

“Disturbing, indeed,” the captain said. Xiaohe watched the interaction intently. “When does the Sailing Master say we set sail again?”

“In three days’ time, Captain,” the sailor said. 

“Not very much time,” the captain said. “Is it possible to hire a new boy by that time?”

The sailors looked to each other. “We can certainly try, sir.”

“See to it, then,” the captain said. “Find a boy, then. No more than fifteen years old, with some experience in service. Find him a uniform, he’ll start his training on the voyage back.”

“Yes, sir,” the sailors both turned and walked back into the town while the captain got into a boat to return to the vessel. Xiaohe watched as the two sailors made their way back inland. An idea began worming its way into her brain. She turned back to the few belongings she had left and fished out the box of her mother’s old things. Inside, there was some old containers of make-up, a little bit of jewelry, and a pair of shears. 

Determination set in. Xiaohe grabbed her things and ran back into town. It wouldn’t be too difficult to swipe what she needed. She’d be out of here before long anyway.

 

—

 

Yixing had been looking at his ring again and wondering how the palm reader managed to slip it off his finger undetected when he arrived on horseback at the palace gates. The bright red walls of the colossal outer gate caught the light of the setting sun, and the color shone fiery and golden while a line of Palace Guards stood upright and ready on the turrets above. Containing over 500 buildings and spanning the distance of the entire South side of the tallest hill in the Capital, the Palace was indeed the most imposing structure in the entire kingdom. It was a residence fit to house the greatest power in the empire, but Yixing always felt awkward entering and leaving. 

He and his entourage of guards were greeted by the rowdy mob of discontent citizens who had gathered outside the palace to shout their complaints through the gates. The Palace Guards had to gather around Yixing’s horse to protect him against the crowd as he passed through. Their anger and wrath filled Yixing’s ears, but as he looked at them, he saw only their individual weariness, their frustration, and their desperation.

“How long have they been here, _Shifu_?” Yixing asked. The captain kept his eyes forward.

“Seven days now,” Captain Huang answered. “The crowd grows everyday. They get louder, angrier, more unruly.”

When they passed through the arches and into the inner gate, the guards closed them quickly, keeping the crowd locked outside. Their cries echoed through the whole complex. Yixing found himself looking back and worrying.

“It looks dangerous,” he commented. “Do they stay through the night? Have they had anything to eat or drink?”

Captain Huang laughed.

“What?” Yixing asked.

“Nothing,” Captain Huang said, dismounting from his horse. “It’s just amusing.”

“What is?” Yixing asked, dismounting form his horse as handing the reins to a stable hand. But he knew what the captain meant. His concern for the mob. Meanwhile, the mob had no concern for him whatsoever.

They walked him through the palace complex, past the next three sets of inner gates and into the Imperial Residence, where they informed him that his father waiting — brooding — for him in the chamber adjacent to the harem. The guards pushed the door open just as Yixing, newly dressed in his own clothing, stepped into the chamber. His father stood at a table with an array of maps spread out over the surface. Off to the side, one of his advisors — Luo Zhixiang’s father — stood, flipping through a book. Captain Huang took his place, standing by the door, one hand on the hilt of his sword, ever ready to face any threat. On a chair at the side of the room, Yixing’s mother sat. Crying. He walked over to her at once.

“Ma,” Yixing said, putting a hand on her shoulder and crouching before he. She lifted her head to look at her son’s face and she choked back another round of sobs. She touched his face gently.

“Oh, Yixing,” she managed to say before fresh tears trickled down her face. Yixing held her hand firmly and then turned to his father.

“What did you do?” he asked sternly. His father slammed his fist down on the table, and the whole room rocked. 

“ _You_ , sir, are in no position to ask questions!” he bellowed. “Is it true?”

Yixing narrowed his eyes at his father. The King was dressed in the finest of his Dragon robes. These silk, crimson ones that he wore were reserved for special occasions such as state dinners, festival appearances, executions, and scolding sessions with his stubborn eldest son. The robe was red and a pair of horned demons were embroidered onto the chest with gold and emerald thread. The king himself was an imposing man. In his youth, he had been handsome but in the intimidating, overtly masculine way. In his old age, he had put on weight and the stresses of his royal duty were beginning to show on his face in the form of deep wrinkles. He set down the drawing compass he held in his hand and dismissed the naval officer from his side. He turned all his energy on his son.

“Is _what_ true?” Yixing asked, playing coy. The king’s face turned red.

“ Is it true that the Royal Seal of the Prince was stolen by some whore in a brothel in Ash Town?” he threw the question at Yixing as though every word was a spear aimed at his chest.

“She wasn’t a whore,” Yixing said, standing and walking to a chair to sit himself down. “She was a waitress. And it wasn’t stolen, it was retrieved.”

“The Ambassador from the Mountain Kingdom waited three hours for you,” the king said. “Have you an inkling of how humiliated we were? Three hours we made him sit in that very chair you are sitting in now. He waited so long, we had to send him back to his residence!” 

“You shouldn’t have gone to the trouble.”

The king was fuming. He stepped out from behind the table with the navigational tools and pointed threateningly at the young prince.

“You will give your seal of approval and I am giving the ambassador your proposal tonight!” the king threatened, his face flushing. “And until the wedding, you will be restricted to the Palace complex!”

Yixing stood from the chair.

“You’re putting me on _house arrest_?” he shouted in reply. “How juvenile.”

“You will hold your tongue, sir!” the king continued. “You will marry Princess Shen of the Mountain Kingdom before the summer is out or I’ll—,”

“Or you’ll, what, Ba?” Yixing said, scoffing. He walked toward the window and leaned against the frame. “You’ll boil me in oil or sentence me to die by One Thousand Cuts? Or maybe you’ll just ignore me and let me die a slow, painful death, like you do your own countrymen!”

A hush fell over the room. Everyone was too stunned by the prince’s sharp answer to reply in any way. The king clenched his fists.

“How dare you?” he growled. Yixing scoffed again. 

“Three-thousand years of dynastic rule and all we have to show for it is a dying country,” Yixing said, looking out the window and catching sight of the growing crowd at the gates once again. He could hear them all chanting, decrying the crimes of the crown against its own people.

“You spend all your time waging war on the Outer Islands, yet you refuse to pay any mind to your people starving in the streets! No wonder they’re so compelled to steal our rings and shout curses at us through the gates—,”

The king slammed his fist on the table again.

“Have you no sense of honor, boy—!?”

“You had none to pass on to me, Your Majesty,” Yixing said. Once more, the room grew silent. What was worse than the prince’s insolence was that he had been right. But his mother suddenly rose from her chair, having finally dried her tears. She stood and walked toward the table where her husband stood, and she placed a hand on his sleeve.

“Yixing please. Sit,” she said gently.  Yixing relaxed his shoulders and begrudgingly sat down in a chair beside the bookcases. His mother put a hand on her chest and gave his father a tender look before shifting her eyes toward Yixing. 

“As much as I disagree with your father on this arrangement,” she said, “We cannot ignore the matter. The King of the Mountains is our closest ally, and with the fighting happening in the Outer Islands, we cannot deny that marrying Princess Shen would strengthen our ties with them.”

Yixing couldn’t believe his mother had taken his father’s side so easily on this matter. He had never known her to easily agree with anything his father said. Arranged marriages never made anyone very happy, his parents in particular. Still, he was almost admirable of the way his mother stood up to him. But it didn’t make it any more surprising.

“Ma,” he said, but his mother turned her face away. 

“Darling, please,” she said gently. “You know I wish you could have married for love, but you were born with certain obligations attached to your privileged position.” 

Yixing’s mother had often told her son that she sincerely hoped that could have the chance that was denied to her: to choose his spouse freely. But being the eldest son, it was not to be. He looked at his mother once more and could see that her heart was breaking for him. She hated this arrangement as much as he did but had less freedom to show it. His father’s mood had calmed somewhat. After another long pause, the king looked at his son again and sighed. He walked around the table and came to stand beside Yixing. He nodded towards the door.

“Come with me,” he said. The king and prince exited the chamber and were escorted along the outer wall of the Imperial Residence, down a flight of stairs and across the courtyard, into a stairwell that led down to an underground den. As the hallway grew dark, torches along the wall illuminated the stairwell. Yixing had been in this part of the palace before, but he hadn’t returned often. It led down to the Divination Hall, where the Diviner in-residence lived and worked. When he and his father entered, they found the Diviner seated at a low table, writing. 

“Old Bi Yu, I trust you are well,” his father greeted. 

The Diviner was an old woman, but she looked like an old man from Yixing point-of-view. When he was young, he and his younger brothers taunted the poor woman, playing pranks and tricks on her. She had been the subject of many ghost stories throughout his childhood. But as he grew up and came to know the woman better, he came to know her as a wise woman who guided him through many important times in his life. Though she was seldom ever very friendly.

She turned and then stood to bow to the king and the prince. She was dressed in a white rob and her long hair fell down her back, past her waist and gathered in the middle by a red ribbon. She was much shorter than Yixing, big-boned and her skin was thin and browned. 

“His Majesty honors me with a visit,” she said. The king stepped forward to take her hand in greeting while Yixing looked around the room. 

The Divination Hall was sometimes also used as a place of ancestor worship. Hence the vast collection of name plaques hanging on the walls and the stone steles at the furthest end of the room. In the middle of the chamber was a shallow pit. A furnace in the corner made the room almost unbearably hot. Some iron rods were heating over the coals. Scattered about the room were various artifacts and tools that the Diviner used in her work. 

The king clap his son on the shoulder and pushed him slightly forward, toward the old woman. 

“I’ve brought my son with me,” the king said, his voice heavy and anxious. “I have been thinking about what we spoke of earlier. I think it is time that we told him as well.”

Yixing looked between the old woman and his father. The blank looks on their faces worried him.

“Told me what?”

The old woman surprised him by taking his hand. When she opened her narrow eyes and looked at him, Yixing felt a shiver pass through him.

“About your destiny,” his father said. Yixing nearly scoffed. He should have known that this was about more of that magical riffraff that his father so heavily believed in. And it was the second time today that someone wanted to divine his destiny. He was tempted to retort that he’d already had his palms read that day. But the Diviner pulled at his hand.

“Come here, Your Highness,” she said. She led the prince and the king over to the low table where she had been writing, and they knelt around it together. Lifting a cloth, the old woman revealed the smooth, level surface of a turtle plastron. Yixing had seen one before, used in a ceremony. It was not just a turtle plastron. It was an oracle bone. The pits drilled into the surface of the plastrons told him so. Old Bi Yu pointed to a carved inscription in the surface, written in an ancient script that Yixing could not read. 

“In eighteen days, precisely, Zhang will have ruled three-thousand years over the Twin Demons Kingdom,” she spoke. Yixing nodded.

“Yes, I know.”

“But you do not why this is significant for you or your family,” the Diviner said. She pushed her sleeves up and began to turn the bone slowly. Yixing swallowed.

“I confess that I don’t,” he said. He watched, mesmerized, as the woman turn the bone clockwise and narrowed her eyes at the script. The oracle bones used by the Diviners-in-residence at the palace were hundreds of years old, passed down from one Diviner to another through the centuries. They were used over and over again, and Yixing never quite knew where they were coming from since they never seemed to run out. 

“Three-thousand years ago, your ancestor, Zhang Shin, seized control of the Kingdom from the Four Warlords after journeying from exile in the Southern Isles,” the woman spoke, telling the age-old tale. “He had only a crew of a hundred men, and he conquered an entire Kingdom. No easy feat. But nothing is impossible when one has the powers of Heaven on one’s side.”

Yixing nodded, slightly annoyed at being told a story he’d heard countless times over the years. “He had divine help, I know.”

“Not just divine help” his father retorted. 

“He had the blessing of the Sea Goddess, Mazu,” Old Bi Yu continued. “His men were caught in a dangerous storm that raged for three nights. On the last tempest-tossed night, Zhang stood on the bow of his ship, lifted his face up to Heaven and shouted to the Goddess that he would sacrifice himself to her if she spared his men and returned them safely home. The Goddess was so touched by his courage, she chose him to be the next great king. And she gave him the first oracle bones to guide his reign.”

The old woman stood and walked over to the furnace to turn over the iron rods she had been heating. Yixing looked at the script on the turtle plastron and wondered why any of this directly pertained to him or his destiny.

“I’ve heard this story before,” Yixing said. 

“Then do you know what each King must do at the end of every one thousand years?” the king asked. Old Bi Yu turned over the iron rods. The fire made a loud crackling noise as she turned thereat up and added more coals. Yixing looked between the two figures and shrugged. His father stood and walked along the wall, looking up at the names of their ancestors. On the principle wall, there were three steles. One belonging to the founder of their dynasty. And two others, Zhang Daomeng and Zhang Zhenwei, two kings who had led military campaigns across the sea. The Diviner jumped back into the story.

“Zhang’s descendants must voyage beyond the Southern Seas,” she said, “To the Realm of the Goddess, Mazu, bearing a gift of her choosing as tribute. And he must take these, the used oracle bones, and he must bury them in the pit and he must renew the Mandate of the Goddess.”

Yixing narrowed his eyes skeptically, looking between the Diviner and the steles with his ancestors’ names. It suddenly occurred to him that if this was true, then the military, naval campaigns less across the sea, were they really voyages to a mythical creature’s lair? 

“So,” Yixing said. “Now that another one-thousand years is over, this year the king needs to—,”

“Yes,” his father said, turning to him. There was a conviction in his eyes that Yixing was not used to seeing on his father’s face. “Just as our ancestors undertook dangerous voyages to the Realm of Mazu. This year, it is my turn.”

Yixing felt as though this was all so sudden, but when he thought back on the past few weeks, he realized that the hints had been there all along. The sudden pushing to marry a princess. The crackdown on the rivalry with the Outer Islanders. The invitation for Naval officers to stay at the palace. The commissioning of a new ship. The maps, the tools, the countless visits to the Divination chamber. His father was preparing to get up and leave. And he wasn’t sure why, but the thought of it infuriated Yixing.

“Is that what this is all about then? All these preparations you’ve been making?” he said, standing up. His father only nodded.

“That is why I need this marriage business settled, son,” he said, stepping toward Yixing. His voice was desperate. “I have a voyage to make, and I need you here should anything happen to me. If something happens, I need to know that you are ready to take my place and govern in my absence. I cannot have you running away anymore. It is time you grew up and shouldered your destiny. You are the Crown Prince of the Twin Demons Kingdom. And soon, the Mountain Princess will be your Queen.”

Yixing looked long and hard at his father’s face, and he wasn’t sure what it was he wanted to believe. That his family had ruled 3,000 years over this land by the blessing of a benevolent Sea Goddess whose mandate to rule had to be sought anew every 1,000 years, or that his father was using this as an excuse to pass the burden of the crown onto his son prematurely. He shook his head slowly.

“No.”

“Yixing!” his father shouted. Yixing backed away and started moving toward the exit of the room.

“No, I know what you’re doing,” he said firmly. “You’re using this as a way to trap me. All this smoke and mirror, superstitious trash, you’re trying to bait me. Well, I won’t fall for it. You think you can walk away from the mess you’ve made and make me clean it up for you?”

His father didn’t have a chance to answer before the prince ran back up the stairwell and into the courtyard. The guards who stood by the door were shocked by his sudden reappearance. Yixing waved their company away as he ascended another stairwell and found himself back in the Imperial Residence. 

It was almost sunset now, and as he looked over the wall he could see the sun preparing to sink beyond the horizon. He felt it again, the urge to get up and run away. To go out and see the world before he was forced to give up his life. As he crossed the South corridor, he passed the harem again and saw that his mother was among the women, and that she was sitting with his younger brothers. 

Youqing was born six years after Yixing, and Liang another four years later. They were his half-brothers, more accurately, the sons of a concubine. As the only biological child of the Queen, the crown passed directly to Yixing instead of Youqing or Liang. His mother was sitting on a bench, watching the both of them. Despite the difference in parentage, the Queen always regarded the two with the same affection she reserved for her own son. 

Yixing stood still for a minute, watching the three of them together. The older boy was teaching the younger how to handle a sword, and Yixing laughed at Liang’s clumsy footwork and grimaced a bit, realizing that Youqing was taller than him now. The scene was so carefree and happy, Yixing envied them. Beyond the walls, he could still hear the mob shouting, angrily. 

_Down with Zhang! Down with Zhang! Down with Zhang!_


	3. A Gentle Voice

Yixing nocked another arrow to his bow and drew back the string. Once his drawing hand reached its anchor, he braced his body and began a slow exhale. He stared down the shaft of the arrow at the target fifty meters away and chose a single point in the center. When he exhaled all the air from his lungs, he released the string. The arrow gave a high-pitched screech as it ripped through the air and lodged its head in the center of the canvas target. The shot completed, the prince lowered his bow and let his stance rest. 

Being under house arrest—despite his earlier protestations—was a lenient punishment when one paused to consider that there was quite a lot to do around the Palace grounds. Archery was merely one of the many activities that Yixing engaged in to fill in the empty hours. It had been years since Captain Huang had deemed him skillful enough to no longer need formal lessons. But preserving his aim meant that he would still need to practice frequently. And Yixing had been neglecting the archery range as of late. 

“Bring me the target, please,” he said to the servant boy standing by. The boy bowed and then ran the fifty meters to retrieve the target. When the boy brought it closer, Yixing tilted his head and frowned at his clumsy aim. The arrowhead had lodged itself just a few inches to the right of dead-center. 

How disappointing, he thought.

“Evidently, you are out of practice,” said a voice behind him. Yixing turned to greet Captain Huang, who crossed his arms over his chest and had an amused look on his face. Yixing scoffed as he took another arrow from the quiver behind his leg and nocked it to the string.

“Or perhaps I had a lousy teacher,” he countered. Captain Huang laughed. Yixing waited for the servant boy to return the target to its place before getting back into his stance. Captain Huang watched quietly as Yixing straightened his back and drew back the string. The captain ordered another target and another bow and quiver to be brought out for him. The servant scurried away to bring the equipment just as Yixing failed to hit another target. 

“I don’t understand,” Yixing grumbled. “I haven’t done anything differently from before. The stance, the nock, the draw, the anchor, everything’s the same.”

Captain Huang smirked. “Maybe it’s you who’s different,” he suggested. Yixing scoffed. 

“Has His Majesty sent you here to talk some sense into me?” he asked, reaching for another arrow. “It won’t work. You of all people should know best, _Shifu_.”

“Know what?” Captain Huang asked. A servant brought him his equipment just as Yixing lowered his bow for a minute and laughed.

“How hard-headed I am,” Yixing said. Captain Huang laughed. Hard-headed, indeed. The captain remembered when the king first approached him about fifteen  or so years ago and asked him to teach his son how to shoot a bow. The captain had been just another Palace guard back then, but when the king broached the subject with his then-captain, the group unanimously agreed that Huang Lei was the most skilled and most qualified. 

Huang Lei had taught many others how to shoot before, and he was convinced that he could teach anyone to shoot. But when the king and queen had first presented the little prince to him all those years ago, he began to doubt his own philosophy. The boy was scrawny and did not have much strength at all. He couldn’t even hit targets that were placed a mere three meters away. He couldn’t draw back the string no matter how light of a bow Huang Lei presented to him. 

He almost gave up on the boy. But the skinny little rascal was too stubborn for that. 

Captain Huang would never forget all the times he had rushed the prince to the Surgeon’s Hall when he hit his arm with the string or when he released the string incorrectly or all the times the Healer had to be summoned to give him massages for the tension in his back. Or the times he had spied the young boy doing push-ups to increase his arm and upper-body strength, all the extra hours of practice he had dedicated himself to. 

It was a long, laborious, and difficult task, filled with emotional outbursts and screaming fights and countless, countless moments when it would have been easy to just give up. But here stood his pupil now, the second finest bowman in the Capital after Huang Lei himself. That is, he would be if he could find his aim again. Huang Lei slipped on the arm and chest guards and got into his own stance. Indeed, no one could know as well as he did just how persistent the prince was when he set his mind to a goal. 

“Actually,” Captain Huang said, fitting an arrow to his bow and drawing back the string. “I did come to talk a little sense into you.”

Yixing laughed, which rocked his grip on the bow, making him shoot into the stone wall behind the target instead. “Should have known,” he said.

“But I wasn’t sent by anyone,” Huang Lei loosed the arrow and shot into the center of the target. “Yesterday, in that room, you said something that bothered me.”

Yixing frowned. “You shouldn’t take anything I said in that room yesterday very seriously,” Yixing said. “I wasn’t my usual self. Emotions were running high in that room. If I said something that offended you—,”

“Not quite so much offended as intrigued,” the captain said. He fitted another arrow and got into his stance. “You said that arranged marriages never made anyone very happy.”

Yixing fidgeted with his arm guard. “Haven’t they?”

Huang Lei shrugged. “My own marriage was arranged,” the captain said. Yixing froze. The captain laughed.

“Don’t be so alarmed,” Captain Huang said. “But it’s true. We married when I was 19, and she was 17. The whole thing was orchestrated by our parents.”

“I didn’t know that,” Yixing said, watching his old master shooting another arrow into another target. 

“I barely speak of my personal life, you wouldn’t have known,” Captain Huang said. 

“And you two are happy, then?” Yixing asked. Captain Huang reached for another arrow from his quiver. 

“I’ll admit that I wasn’t happy about it when I was 19,” the captain said. “I resisted, just like you. My goal was to join the Palace Guard, become a soldier of the Order of the White Lion, take the oath, and serve my king. I thought that if I had a wife, she would just get in the way of all that. But I was wrong.”

Yixing smiled, seeing the look of quiet contentment that made its way onto the captain’s face. Yixing caught himself staring at the horizontal scar beneath his left eye again, the one that all the Palace guards had. Over the years, Yixing had many opportunities to have talks with Captain Huang Lei, but he swore that this was the first time the captain had confided something as deeply personal as this. 

“So you love her, then?” Yixing asked. Huang Lei had drawn back the string already, but he suddenly relaxed his stance and looked at the ground. Oddly enough, no one had ever asked him if he loved his wife. Perhaps because the answer so obviously should be an enthusiastic “yes,” but it could also be because no one expected him to love her. The whole thing had been arranged, after all. Whether or not he loved her was irrelevant. 

“You know, Yixing,” Huang Lei said, and Yixing was taken slightly aback that the captain had used his given name. Captain Huang still looked down at the ground. 

“All my life, I’ve been shouted at,” he continued. “First by my mother and father, then by my teachers, then by my superiors, and then, soon, I was the one doing the shouting. All my life, I’ve been surrounded by barking orders, complaints, cries of pain, angry shouts. When I met my wife, the first thing I noticed was how soft her voice was. How gentle it was.”

The captain looked over at Yixing. The younger boy had a blank look on his face. Captain Huang had been looking after the royal family almost 24 years now. He had known Yixing all his life, having been initiated into the Order on the day after the prince was born. Huang Lei supposed that Yixing did not know yet what it was like to be a gentle voice in someone’s noisy life because the prince had not yet been in love like he had. Captain Huang laughed as he drew back the string.

“All I’m saying is, Your Highness,” the captain said, loosing an arrow and hitting his target once again. “Is that sometimes, we must do things we don’t want to do in order to reach our goals. When I first married, I thought I would divorce her in under five years. It’s been 25 years now, and we have two children. I hope this will inspire you to at least give this arranged marriage some kinder consideration.”

Yixing smiled, fitting another arrow to his bow, the last one in his quiver. 

“I appreciate it, _Shifu_ ,” Yixing said. “But like I said before, you know more than anyone, how stubborn I am. It would hardly be like myself to reverse my position now. I respect you and your wife. I’m happy that it worked out in your favor.”

Yixing adjusted the guard on his fingers before drawing the string back. But in that small fraction of a moment, he caught sight of his palms, and his eyes traced the lines. It really had been a shame that he hadn’t asked the palm reader about what the lines said about his future married life. Though in retrospect, maybe it was for the best. A moment later and he might have lost his ring for good. 

He picked his bow back up and stepped into his stance. As he drew the string back, he peered down the arrow shaft at the target once more and focused on the point in the center of the canvas. He slowed his breath, exhaled, and released.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short update this time because this was supposed to be tacked onto the beginning on the next chapter, but if I included it, then the next one would be oddly very long, and it didn't quite go along with the rest of the chapter anyway. Also, I couldn't resist writing this, because archer!Yixing is the sexiest.


	4. Storm at the Gates

“How is the allocation of rights and principles to the management of water resources different from the normal allocation of rights and principles to the management of other types of property?” Youqing, the second prince, read the question aloud from a piece of paper that the royal tutor had given him with sample questions from the Imperial Civil Examination. After reading the question aloud, he looked to his older brother, who was sitting on a cushion and leaning his back against the wall. 

The three princes had gathered in a private sitting room in the Imperial Residence. During the day, the sitting room was used for the Queen’s particular use, but in the evenings, the boys took over it. It was a well-lit room with a green carpet in the center of the floor. The walls were furnished with fine rosewood chairs, inlaid with gold and decorated with floral motifs. Youqing had moved a low table into the center of the room so he could sit and write while Yixing opted for the cushion. Their youngest brother, Liang, had fallen asleep on the daybed near the portrait of the royal family. 

It was late, just a little past midnight, and the boys were normally tucked away in their own beds by this time. But Youqing was to take the Civil Examination in the morning, and he wasn’t confident yet that he would pass. He looked at Yixing, expecting him to answer, but the crown prince only shrugged.

“You take a guess, first,” Yixing said. “I can’t take the examination for you.”

Youqing tightened the grip on his brush. 

“It’s mobile,” Youqing said. “A city in the North could claim to have control over a certain river, but if the river flows South, a city further downstream could say the same. That makes it difficult to create a property rights scheme for the management of water.”

“True,” Yixing said, looking up at the ceiling. “But you should also consider that water can be reused, so it’s not consumed like other types of property. There’s also a difference between ground water and surface water, and many existing water doctrines—,”

“I need to tell you something,” Youqing suddenly said, cutting Yixing off. Yixing blinked at him and noted how jumpy his brother seemed. The boy’s eyes were darting between Yixing, the door, their sleeping brother, and the ground. Yixing laughed.

“Why are you so nervous?” Yixing asked, slumping down in the cushion. “Even if you fail the exam, it’s not as if you’d be completely excluded from Affairs of State. You’re in the room where it happens all the time.”

Yixing used to think about what a shame it was that his half-brother, six years his junior, had been born second and to a concubine instead of being the first-born son of the queen. Between him and Yixing, Youqing was obviously more interested. But that didn’t seem to be the matter that was bothering the younger prince. Yixing looked sternly at him. 

“What is it?” Yixing asked. Youqing dropped the brush and began scratching his wrist. A nervous habit of his. 

“S-Someting has happened,” Youqing said, keeping his eyes down to the ground. Yixing pushed himself off the cushion and knelt on the edge of the carpet.

“What’s happened?” he asked, getting nervous. Youqing sighed.

“Do you… know the person who collects our laundry at the end of each day?” Youqing said. Yixing pressed his lip together and narrowed his eyes, trying to think of who Youqing was referring to. The person who collected their laundry each day was a servant girl, a teenager. He didn’t know her name.

“Is it… Son—Song… Song Li—,”

“Songlian,” Youqing said, nodding and averting his eyes. Yixing waited and waited for Youqing to continue, but the younger boy just kept staring at the floor, breathing heavy. 

“What about her?” Yixing asked. He watched his brother go from a silent rock to a quivering mess. He was trying not to let his emotions get the better of him, but as Yixing got closer a put a hand on his shoulder, he let out the breath he’d been holding in.

“I… well, we… she and I…,” Youqing started sputtering out, but Yixing already understood. He took his hand from Youqing’s shoulder. 

“I see,” Yixing said, staring blankly at the ground between him and Youqing. The younger boy was still too ashamed to look his old brother in the face. Yixing sat back on his heels, pressing his fists against his thighs. Youqing had always been friendly with the help, and the female servants were especially fond of the charming 18-year-old. Somehow, Yixing had overlooked the possibility of something like this happening to them. 

“What exactly has happened?” Yixing asked. The younger prince sighed.

“She’s with child,” Youqing said. “And it’s mine.” 

“God in heaven,” Yixing said, running a hand through his hair. He didn’t know whether he wanted to scold Youqing for being careless or for consorting with a servant. Or if he wanted to probe him with questions and learn more about how their relationship developed. Still, another part wanted to tell his brother not to worry and that he would make sure everything went smoothly. But Youqing suddenly sat up and there was a look of determination in the young man’s eyes. 

“I’m going to marry her,” he said. Yixing blinked at the boy.

“Youqing, think about this,” Yixing said, putting a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Think about what our father would say. You’re a prince, he won’t consent to this easily.”

“I don’t care if it’s hard,” Youqing said, his eyes desperate. “I don’t care if our father will fight me over this. Whatever it takes, I have to.” Without another word, without even pausing to collect his things, Youqing stood up and stormed out the room. Yixing was left stunned in the center of the chamber, staring after the boy. Yixing considered getting up and going after Youqing. But the brothers were too similar; both were stubborn and wouldn’t be moved by anyone once their minds were set. Yixing sighed. He turned to his youngest brother instead, sleeping on the daybed. 

It was late at night, and he had no energy to move Liang back to the harem or to journey back to his own chamber. So he followed the younger boy’s example by walking over to the canopy bed on the further side of the chamber. He laid himself down and fell asleep. 

 

—

 

Down by the palace gates, the guards on the turret could not afford the luxury of sleep. Below, the unruly mob from earlier in the day was still gathered at the gate. They had all decided to sit down during the night, but refused to leave for fear that their demonstration would lose strength. They all looked at one another and grumbled that their bodies could not keep up with the passion of their unhappiness. In the surrounding woods, there was movement, unrest. The people began shifting on their feet, looking around themselves. They were apprehensive, as were the soldiers on the turret who noticed the movement, too.

Out of the darkness of the wood emerged a lone figure. A woman in a thick green coat, a pointed cap, and tall brown boots. She walked forward with her head held high, and the surrounding mob was confused by her. She was ordinary woman, and yet the air of regality that surrounded her suggested that they ought to stand and pay their respects. But she kept walking until she nearly at the gate. Upon closer inspection, the crowd determined that she was no ordinary woman. Her face was lined with the wrinkles of late middle age and her hair was partially hidden by her cap. She stared at the gates, looking them up and down, examining them. 

“Have you come to join the demonstration?” one of the people called out to her. She turned and looked at the man. A common peasant, a few years younger than her. The age her brother was when he was killed in action. Her face was austere. 

“No,” she answered. She marched her boots up to a raised platform just to right of the gate, and she stood on it, in clear view of the massive crowd of rioters that had gathered. 

“Listen!” she shouted, her voice reverberating through the crowd. They all stood and a murmur passed like a heartbeat through the people. Even the soldiers on the turrets looked over the edge to see about the commotion. Only a handful of the soldiers recognized Cheng, the banished soldier of the Royal Navy, leader of the People’s Revolutionary Army. With all eyes on her, Cheng continued.

“Brethren,” she projected her voice. “Brethren! Listen to me!”

The crowd shuddered as they all leapt to their feet. 

“I see you all gathered here, huddled against the night and the cold while your king sleeps under yards of silk!” she shouted, her voice as clear and strong as a cannon ball ripping through the mist. “I ask you now why you gather here instead of fight? Yes, fight. Look around yourselves. See how numerous you are!”

From the depths of the forest, the troops of the People’s Army began to step forward, adding to the numbers of the already swollen crowd. Up on the turrets, the soldiers were restless. Messages were dispatched to their superiors. They held onto their weapons.

“My brothers and sisters, consider this!” Cheng shouted. “You are the legs this kingdom stands upon. Why should you all loiter outside the gates of a palace which rightfully belongs to you?”

The crowd began to press against each other. Their jeering began to rise in volume, and the soldiers grew nervous. Someone shouted for a bowman to shoot the woman. Another warned against it, saying that it would only rouse the crowd more. 

“Why should you all bend to the will of one evil man when in your sturdy hearts lies the spark of revolution, the strength of a nation?” she spoke. The people had begun shouting again.

Down with Zhang! Down with Zhang!

“Rise up, I say! Get off your knees!” she shouted, spit during out of her mouth with every revolutionary word that left her mouth. “You are the ones who know misfortune and degradation, you are the ones with limitless courage and endurance! Liberty and happiness is yours for the taking! Fight for it, comrades! Rise up! Take it! It’s yours!”

The rebels ran forward, storming the palace gates. On the turrets, the soldiers began to scatter, running to their battle stations. They beat on the drums, sounding the alarm. The people rallied against the wooden gates that shut them out. They pressed against it, their cries rising up like a sigh from the depths of the earth. The rebels urged them on. Finally, the gate gave away, and the rabble poured into the palace complex like a poison into a glass. 

“Send a message to the Captain!”

“Archers at the ready!”

“Man the second gate! Don’t let them through!”

“Alert the king and queen! Guards, to the Residence!” 

The mob began to break things, set building on fire. They entered the halls and robbed and looted every room they entered. Cheng and her team of trusted comrades stormed into the complex and immediately ran to the main stairwell of the Eastern part of the compound. Her mind was drunk on the idea of vengeance. Tonight, finally, the three-thousand years of nightmarish tyranny would end at her hand. 

 

— 

 

Yixing was jolted awake by a hand clapping over his mouth. He tried to scream, but his eyes opened the sight of Captain Huang’s face. Shadows from a lit torch danced over his face and the faces of the other guards. Yixing sat up in bed and look around himself. 

“What are you doing?’ the prince demanded. He looked behind Captain Huang at the other guards. He saw Youqing and Liang lingering at the back of the group, alarmed expressions on their faces. For some reason, they were wearing the uniforms of the Palace Guard. Captain Huang grabbed Yixing and pulled him off the canopy bed. His voice was low and urgent. 

“Listen to me!” Captain Huang said, bringing the torch closer. “Your Highness, the People's Army have breached the Main Gate, they’re in the complex.”

“What?” Yixing’s heart dropped. “How? What’s happening?”

“Put this on!” another one of the guards shouted, tossing another set of the guard uniform to Yixing. The prince looked to Captain Huang for an explanation. The captain moved to the window of the sitting room and looked outside.

“Hurry!” Youqing shouted. Yixing, with no concern for modesty, took off the light robe he wore to sleep and was rushed by the guards to put on the uniform. 

“Where are they now?” Yixing asked. Almost as soon as the clasps of the uniform were done, he was grabbed by another pair of guards and ushered out into the hall. A team of at least twelve guards were in the company. There were two men for each of the princes. 

“Where’s my mother?” Yixing demanded. In the distance, he could hear the sound of explosions and angry shouts, the clang of swords and gunpowder. “Captain Huang! Tell me where my mother is!” 

“I’ve sent another team to fetch her!” he said, forcing the princes’ heads down as they crossed a hallway. Guards ran ahead and brought up the rear, checking every corner before passing through. 

“And what of the harem, Captain?!” Liang shouted, his voice shaking. 

“Sealed off!” Captain Huang shouted. “We are evacuating the complex, but we need to get you three out!”

“And the King?” Yixing asked. He was pushed down to the ground by a guard. Two more men leapt in front of him. Down at the end of the hall, two rebels appeared. The younger boys screamed as the rebels shot two arrows at the guards. They rebels bolted down the hall, yelling barbarically.

“They’re in here!” one of the them shouted. “The princes! They’re here!” 

Two more rebels appeared. The man to Yixing’s left was shot in the shoulder with an arrow. Another man grabbed the back of Yixing’s shirt and tugged him backward. Captain Huang gave the order to engage the rebels. 

“Take the princes away!” the captain shouted. He turned and felled another rebel with the swing of a sword, kicked another down to the ground before stabbing him in the chest. Yixing’s ears were ringing, his mind reeling. He couldn’t register anything at all between sprinting down the halls of the Residence and dodging corners, worrying over his brothers and the men protecting them. 

“This way, Your Highness!” the guard shouted at him. Yixing followed him, jumping in the left corridor. 

“Soldier!” Yixing shouted. “Tell me what happened to the King!”

“He has been captured, Your Highness!” the soldier said. Yixing’s heart dropped. His father. Captured? By the rebels? Youqing crashed into him from behind. The guards pulled him along, leading him to a door which flung open. The guards from the rear ran up to the front, checking the area for threats. There was a group of rebels fifty meters away. The princes were pushed to the wall and made to run along with their handlers. Yixing struggled to catch his breath and to steady his heart. 

He looked up at the turrets and saw the guards there shooting down into the mob. Screams and shouts of chaos assaulted his ears. He couldn’t know what exactly was happening, but anarchy was unfolding all around him. 

“They’ve taken the East Houses!” 

“Send a company down to the Eastern Wall! Evacuate the Librarians’ Hall!”

“The Front Palace has caught fire!” 

“Man your stations, men!”

“Just run!” 

“Three of the concubines are missing!”

“Get to the stables!” 

“They’ve taken the King!”

“They’re running around to the Western Gate! Seal off the gardens!” 

The detail was startled by the sudden arrival of Captain Huang Lei, rejoining the team after warding off the rebels from the hallway. Beads of thick sweat rolled down his forehead. Yixing noted fresh blood on his uniform. The captain’s eyes dodged from Yixing to Youqing to Liang, counting a grand total of three princes. He beckoned them to run to the stables, where the horses had already been fitted with bridles and saddles. Yixing was relieved to see that there was already a horse with his mother mounted on its back, a rider was on it with her. 

Her eyes were swollen and red. Behind the royal family, another explosion rocked the compound. 

“What was that?” Youqing shouted. 

“If I am not mistaken,” Captain Huang said, helping Liang onto a horse. “That was the Servants’ Hall.”

Youqing suddenly shot a glance at Yixing, who begged his brother with his eyes not to do anything rash. But Youqing had already ripped his arm away from his soldier handler. He ran back toward the chaos.

“Youqing! Stop!” Yixing screamed. The guards ran after the middle prince and grabbed him before he could get very far. 

“Let me go!” Youqing cried and began screaming Songlian’s name. Yixing tore his eyes away from the scene and was pushed towards a horse.

“I’m gonna be sick,” he said. But in the next moment, a soldier had bent down and gave him a leg-up onto the horse. His mother shouted his name, his father’s name, her voice strained against her tears and her inability to chase her breath. Youqing was shoved onto a horse, too, and with the whole company on horseback, Captain Huang gave the order to ride out. The stable hands ran to the back gate and swung it open. It was not yet swarmed by rebels. The company rode through. The queen closed her eyes and cried out into the night. The younger princes were scared stiff. And Yixing kept straining his neck as he looked back at the carnage.

 

— 

 

“They’re called the People's Army!” Captain Huang shouted to Yixing as they rode through the town. “A dangerous rebel group that your father fought against all his life! They came to the Palace and roused the mob there! After the Gate was torn down, they flooded the Eastern part of the complex. Your father was there, visiting the libraries!”

“Captain Huang, I’m going to be sick!” Yixing shouted back. The towns was surprisingly quiet despite the towers of ash and smoke that rose up from the hillside, where the Palace was still being ransacked by the rebels. 

“We have arranged passage for the four of you on a ship to the Mountain Kingdom!” Captain Huang shouted. “Aboard the Chimera, the captain is loyal to Zhang! She’s anchored in the harbor now, waiting for us! The Diviner has been fetched, as well!”

“We are to just leave, then?!” Youqing shouted. “What of mine and Liang’s mothers? The servants? Our tutors? They are all still back there! Why aren’t we taking them with us?” 

“Our orders were to fetch the members of the royal family!” a soldier shouted back.

“Songlian is my family!” Youqing’s eyes welled up with enraged tears. “Yixing, order them to go back! She’s pregnant! And it’s my child!” 

“We can’t, Your Highness!” Captain Huang shouted. 

“Youqing, I’m sorry!” Yixing said. The middle prince narrowed his eyes at both the captain and his older brother. A bitter seed planted itself in his heart. 

“I hate you!” he growled. Suddenly, Youqing grabbed the reins and tore them from the soldier’s grasp. He shoved the man backward and the guard fell over the horse into a heap on the dirt ground. The company stopped, the horses whined from the suddenness of the halt. Youqing turned his horse around and rode back up the road. 

“Youqing, don’t!” Liang shouted. Captain Huang could see Yixing itching to grab the reins of his horse and do the same. The captain grabbed onto the bridle of Yixing’s horse.

“After him!” Captain Huang said. The soldiers didn’t need to be told. Already, three of the guards departed from the group, turned their horses back up the trail and rode toward the middle prince. 

“Bring him back! Please!” the queen cried. Yixing watched his brother’s horse riding back up the path and he cursed the boy’s stupidity, but secretly prayed that both Youqing, Songlian, and their unborn child would be safe. He turned to Captain Huang. 

“What now, Shifu?” he said. Captain Huang swallowed and looked back at his men.

“We keep riding,” he said. “We don’t stop until we reach the harbor. Let’s go!” 

Yixing watched his brother’s shadowy figure shrink into the distance with a heavy heart. He was about to grab the reins and direct his horse toward the harbor when he saw Youqing’s body suddenly felled from his mount. His skin paled. Even from this distance, Yixing saw the arrow rising up and out of Youqing’s chest. 

“No!” Yixing shouted. Captain Huang saw the attack, too. Before anyone could react, up from the rooftops appeared a band of cloaked assassins. A shower of arrows spooked the horses, throwing off many of the riders, including young Liang, his security handler, and the queen. 

“Liang!” Yixing shouted. Before his handler could prevent him, Yixing leapt down from the horse and bolted toward his younger brother, throwing himself over the boy. Captain Huang jumped down from his mount, ordering his men to aim for the rooftops. Some of the rebel assassins had jumped down and started rushing the pack of guards. Captain Huang drew his sword, ready to defend the queen and the princes. Yixing pushed his brother back, further away from the fighting.

“Are you alright?” he asked. The younger boy nodded frantically. Yixing pointed to a horse.

“Get on that horse and ride for the harbor! Go!”

“No! I won’t leave you!”

“Do it, Liang! Get out of here!” Yixing shoved the boy toward the horse, and then he grabbed a felled soldier’s sword. “Get out of here! Run!” 

The younger boy’s vision was blurred by tears, but he turned and bolted toward the horse. Yixing’s hands shook as he took the sword. He turned and his eyes searched for his mother, but he was immediately met by a man in black robes, shouting as he hurled a blade down at his head. Yixing lifted the sword and parried the man’s blows. He fell back against his heels with every swing and every hit. 

“Down with Zhang!” the man shouted, his breath as hot and foul as hell. Yixing’s reflexes were slow, and he managed to just barely keep himself from being killed. The whirr of an arrow shot through the sky, and the head lodged itself into the assassin’s side. The rebel dropped to the side and Yixing dealt the decisive blow, driving his sword into the man’s chest. When he looked up, he expected to see Captain Huang with another arrow pointed to another enemy. 

But instead he saw his mother, the queen, with a bow in her hands. 

“Yixing,” she said. Her son was barely over the shock of the earlier events of the evening. Seeing his mother handling a weapon was not the biggest surprise of the night, but it was shocking nevertheless. 

“Ma,” Yixing said. He was going to walk toward her, in the next split-second she had fitted an arrow to the string, drew it back, and shot straight at him. 

Yixing heard the sickening thwack of an arrowhead hitting its mark. But he was not the one who had been hit. He felt a body collapsing onto his back, and Yixing stumbled forward as a rebel’s body slumped forward, the fingers gripping his bow had gone slack. An arrow had passed through his eye socket. Yixing’s heart began to hammer away at his chest. His mother had saved his life. He turned back to her, but he felt a sharp, ripping sensation in his chest when he saw her. 

An arrow stuck out of her gut. 

“No,” Yixing whispered. He ran to her before she could fall, and he caught her body. “Ma! No!” 

Despite his years of training in archery, Yixing knew devastatingly little about how to help someone who had been pierced by one. He knew only the effects. A shot to the gut was especially fatal. Unprotected by a cage of ribs, the fleshy organs were especially susceptible to arrowhead wounds. His mother’s blood soaked her ruqun. It spilled onto the streets and strained his hands. 

He couldn’t breathe suddenly. He couldn’t think or move or hear or speak. All he could do was look and watch, helpless to do anything. His body shook violently as he tried to hold her hands. The queen’s eyes were half-lidded. Her breathing was ragged and weak. 

“Y…Yi…Xing,” she whispered. But Yixing’s voice was choked back by the breaths he couldn’t seem to deliver. With the last of her strength, she placed her hand over his.

“Are you alright, my dear?” she asked. Yixing looked past the tears that stung his eyes and he looked at her face. How beautiful she looked. 

“Ma?” he whispered. Her eyes had closed and her gasping breaths choked just once more before she stopped breathing altogether. Yixing’s throat finally let go of his breathing and he let out a deep, ragged sigh and a scream. There was not enough time to linger and mourn, however. In another minute, the soldiers had regrouped and reported that more assassins were on their way. Captain Huang approached Yixing.

“Your Highness,” the captain said forlornly. “We cannot delay.”

“We have to bury her,” Yixing whispered, his face turned down to the ground. Captain Huang bit his lip.

“Yixing, there is no time,” he said, looking regretfully at the body of the fallen queen. “Your mother was the one who ordered us to take you away. If you stay and die, her sacrifice will have been for nothing.”

“Her sacrifice!” Yixing said, turned his face to the captain and exposing the white-hot, enraged tears in his face. There was another explosion at the Palace. By now, the houses were beginning to light their lamps, passersby began to stick their head out of windows to see what the commotion was about. Captain Huang had no choice but to lift Yixing off the floor. He was whisked onto a horse, screaming and resisting the entire way, reaching out to his mother’s body. Captain Huang gave the order and the company continued down the road.

In time, it would become Captain Huang’s deepest regret in life, never giving the queen the burial she deserved. 

Their company had been reduced by nearly three-quarters. The only surviving members of the princes’ detail were Captain Huang and four other soldiers. When they reached the harbor, the only person to greet them was a sailor who held a lamp. He raced toward the riders and rushed them onto the dock. 

“Hurry!” the sailor said. Yixing jumped down from the horse, but immediately his knees gave away and he fell to the ground. Captain Huang had to grab his arm and help him limp into the dinghy that would take them to the ship. Yixing pressed the heels of his palms into his temples. 

“I’m going to be sick,” he repeated. Captain Huang gave the order for the sailor to row them to the ship. They had already reached the ship and were being helped onto the deck when Yixing had a last minute thought. 

“Wait!” he shouted. “Liang! My brother! Where is he? I sent him ahead of me.”

But the crew ignored him. The Quarter Master was already shouting orders for the sails to be unfurled and for the anchor to be hoisted. When no one answered him, Yixing grabbed the front of one of the soldiers’ shirts.

“Where is my brother?” he demanded, enunciating every word. He shot a look at Captain Huang, who kept silent.

“Why won’t any of you answer me?” Yixing asked, his voice low. “As Prince of the Twin Demons Kingdom, I command one of you to tell me what’s happened to him. Speak up!” 

All around him the crew was making preparations to set sail. Cargo was being stowed, the men were running to their positions, and Yixing was running around looking for someone in charge.

“Wait!” he shouted desperately. He found the ship’s captain speaking with Huang Lei at the stern. “We can’t leave! Liang isn’t on the ship yet! Send someone to find him!”

“Your Highness,” the ship’s captain said. “The ship is ready to set sail. Everything is stowed, our course has been charted, the anchor—,”

“You will leave that god-forsaken anchor where it is!” Yixing shouted into the man’s face. “My brother is not yet on the ship, do you understand—?!” 

“Yixing!” Captain Huang said. Yixing turned to the man, ready to fight. But before another word could be said, the captain had his arms around the prince. Yixing struggled against the embrace at first, but the realization sunk into him. Liang would not be joining them onboard. He had been lost. Yixing stopped fighting against the captain’s embrace and sunk into it instead. Feeling the most exhausted and most broken he had ever felt in his life. 

The ship had already started to sail. The men kept busy, loading and unloading cargo, readying the cabin below deck for their royal stow-away. Anything to keep their minds off of the slaughter they were sailing away from. The sky burned red with the light and heat of the fire and bloodshed. Just like that, the shining palace on the hillside had turned into a holocaust of stone. 

A few meters away from the exiled prince and the Captain of the Guard, the cabin boy was pulled away from his duties by the sight of hell raining down on the kingdom. She leaned against the port side railing of the trading vessel as she held onto her cap, drinking in the sight of the smoke and flames.


	5. A Message Intercepted

Xiaohe shoved a low stool against the door and propped her foot up against it, hoping that the added weight would be enough to keep it shut. It was dark inside the shallow maintenance closet below deck and it was difficult to move without being in danger of knocking over one of the mops or other equipment. But it was the only place on the vessel with enough privacy. Even the washroom contained too many gaps between the wood for her to comfortably adjust her bindings in it. Once the door was properly shut, she took her shirt off and began unwrapping the strip of cloth binding her chest. 

She wished she had enough time to come up with a better solution. The strip of cloth she had swiped from a corner stand lacked the proper elasticity  and she was only able to wear it comfortably for a few hours at a time. Her mother had blessed her with a womanly chest, but it required a bit more tightening in order to pass her off as a teenaged eunuch and not a 23-year-old girl. Xiaohe had cropped her long, black hair for the cause, but it wouldn’t matter if the rest of her womanly features gave her away. 

When the bindings came away, she felt the blast of cold, ocean air hitting her breast and she heaved in a deep breath. Xiaohe leaned back against the shelf and took a few more deep breaths. She needed just a few minutes to take a break from the bindings and air out her chest. Sweat had collected there, as well. She smirked a little, thinking about how awful it would be if one of the other sailors happened to walk into the maintenance closet at this very moment and catch her in such a position. They may be licensed traders and sea men, but they were all men nonetheless. And she was under no delusions that none of them wouldn’t take advantage of such an opportunity if it presented itself

There was a violent shove at the door, and it would have opened had not her foot been pressing the stool up against it. Xiaohe gasped and instinctively covered her breasts with an arm. She heard the man behind the door curse aloud. Panicked, she grabbed the cloth and began wrapping it around her chest again, making sure to leave a little more slack this time. 

“Oy!” the man shouted, shoving the door again. “What’s going on here!?”

“The door is jammed, sir!” Xiaohe called out, deepening her voice a bit. There was pause.

“Eunuch Jun?” the voice outside said. “Is that you, lad?”

“Yes, sir!” Xiaohe said, securing the bindings and throwing her shirt back on. 

“What in the devil’s name are you doing in there, son?” the man shouted back. “Quarter Master’s looking for you! You been in there all morning?”

“Uh,” Xiaohe said, looking about the closet for something, anything. “I was, uh, looking for a bucket, sir!”

She grabbed a bucket. “I was looking for bucket, and a stool was pushed to the door,” she said. “I’ll be right out!” 

“Well, hurry!” the man shouted. “The prince is up, and you can’t make him wait forever for a bit of breakfast. He’s had a rough day!” 

Xiaohe — Eunuch Jun — emerged from the maintenance closet with a bucket in hand and stepped past the sailor into the white light of an overcast day at sea. There was a cold wind blowing into the sails. A line of men were on their knees on the starboard side, swabbing the deck with a mixture of salt water and pine tar. Whenever she looked the rolling waves of endless ocean, she couldn’t believe she had actually done this. Ran away, that is. All her life, Xiaohe never imagined that she would be standing on the deck of a ship, en route to a future away from brothels and beggars. Before the captain had accepted her (Jun) for the Cabin Boy position, she had promised herself that once the ship hoisted anchor, she would no longer be Han Xiaohe, the street-rat whore’s daughter. 

She would be important. Somehow, someway. 

At the moment, she planned on gaining the trust of the captain and the men by being an esteemed member of their crew, even if that meant she had to work her way up from the position of Cabin Boy over the years. 

“Eunuch Jun!” shouted the Quarter Master. He was a tall man, middle-aged, with hair cut close to his scalp and narrow eyes. He approached the Cabin Boy with his fingers interlocked behind his back.

“Aye, sir,” Xiaohe said, clearing her throat.

“The prince has awakened,” the Quarter Master said. “Take him his tray now. I shall accompany you to his cabin and you will make yourself available to his every need. Do you understand, boy?”

Xiaohe nodded. “Aye, sir.” She fetched the tray from the cook and fell into step beside the Quarter Master as they descended into the captain’s cabin, which was where the prince was being stowed for the journey. Xiaohe wasn’t sure if it was a Heaven’s good humor or simply chance that the prince ended up boarding the same ship as she. All she knew was that it was imperative that he would not recognize her. 

The Quarter Master knocked on the door and waited. A soldier opened it and examined them both before letting them in. Xiaohe hadn’t been inside the captain’s cabin after she had been ordered to clean it and clear out any offending objects. It was crammed full of people. The ship’s captain, the Captain of the Guard, six soldiers, a General, an old woman, the Sailing Master, and the prince himself, sitting on the captain’s daybed, cradling his head in his hands. The Quarter Master stretched his arm out and motioned for her to stop and stand still. 

A few of the men were gathered around a table in the center of the room, where maps and papers were spread out. The General unrolled a piece of paper with the illustration of a woman on it.

“The leader of the rebellion is a woman named Cheng, Your Highness,” the General said. “ She is a former soldier of the Royal Navy, she attempted to stage a mutiny with another sailor. The attempt was foiled and both were banished from the kingdom for their crimes. About eight years ago, she formed the People’s Army with three others, though we suspect she is the one calling the shots.”

Yixing had a blanket thrown over his shoulders, but he still felt oddly cold and sick. His head was throbbing and his stomach churned. He still wore the uniform of the Palace Guards. The only thing missing from his White Lion ensemble was the scar beneath his eye. The General continued.

“The People’s Army claim that their goal is the overthrow of your dynasty and the raising up of the lower and middle classes, Your Highness,” he said. “Though we also suspect that part of this is a vendetta against your father.”

At the mention of the man, Yixing looked up at the General and Captain Huang with a desperate look. The events of the previous night came rushing to him again.

“What’s happened to him? My father?” Yixing begged. “You said he was captured when they took the Palace. Where is he now? What have they done with him?”

The captain and General Sun shared a look between them. As if silently arguing with they eyes who would be the one to tell him. In the end, Captain Huang sighed and turned to the young prince with a sad expression.

“We don’t know yet, Your Highness,” he said. Yixing felt as if a sword had been run through him. His stomach flipped. 

“You don’t know?” he asked. The room turned cold. The ship’s captain came to the rescue.

“We have a nest of homing pigeons, sir,” he said. “I can send for one to be brought for you.”

Captain Huang nodded.

“That would be useful. Please,” he said. At that, the Quarter Master pushed Xiaohe forward. She braced herself and turned her eyes downward. He couldn’t possibly recognize her. He hadn’t looked at her face long enough to remember it, and she looked too different from before. She hoped.

“This is Eunuch Jun, Your Highness. Our Cabin Boy,” the Quarter Master said. “He will be looking after your needs during your journey with us. He has already gone through great pains to make this voyage comfortable for you. He has brought you your tray. He’s also laid out the sheets and pillows for your bed, cleared out the chamber pot, even scrubbed and polished these floors—,”

Almost immediately, Yixing doubled over and, with a horrible gagging sound, puked all over the newly scrubbed and polished floors. Captain Huang rushed over and placed a hand on his shoulder as he emptied the contents of his stomach. Xiaohe frowned and tried to keep herself from saying something rude. 

Yixing gasped for air after the purge, and spat the bitter taste out of his mouth. His eyes began to water and his head was still pounding. He looked up and saw the Quarter Master and the Cabin Boy. 

“I’m sorry,” Yixing sighed as Captain Huang pushed him to lean back against the wall of the cabin. The Quarter Master nudged Xiaohe’s arm.

“Eunuch Jun. Leave the tray here,” the ship’s captain said. “ And then if you’ll please go into the nest and produce a pigeon and bring it to Captain Huang. He wishes to send a message.”

“Aye, sir,” Xiaohe said. She left the tray on the table with the maps. She was about to turn and leave when the Quarter Master grabbed her arm and told her to bow before she turned her back to the prince. Yixing inched himself forward on the bed and reached for the bowl of hot porridge. Once the Cabin Boy was gone, the General turned back to the prince.

“Your Highness,” he said. “I think we ought to consider a proportionate military response. We still have friends back in the Capital and in the Mountain Kingdom.”

The warmth of the porridge going down his throat was soothing, though Yixing was afraid it may come back up again soon. He nodded.

“Of course. That’s a good idea,” he said. 

“We will need you to speak with the King there, then,” General Sun continued. “To give their troops permission to enter the Kingdom and form an alliance with our men.”

Yixing put the bowl back down and looked at the General.

“Me?” he asked, eyes wide. General Sun swallowed before speaking again. 

“In the absence of the King, you are next in the chain of command.”

Yixing stared at the general for a long time, not sure if he was going to argue or not. Instead, he pressed his lips together and look away into the middle distance.

“Right. Me,” Yixing said. 

It was only now beginning to dawn on him that all royal responsibility was falling on his shoulders. With his father captured by rebels, it was up to him to assume the duties of the King. He was an acting regent now. Whether or not he was ready to shoulder the role was irrelevant. He had to bear it if there was any chance of restoring the monarchy. They would soon be at war. The old man, the Diviner suddenly stepped forward. She looked haggard, more so than usual, and she was clutching a grey cloth package to her chest. 

“Your Highness, if I may offer an alternative,” she said. Yixing looked at her.

“An alternative?”

She placed the package on the table and undid the knot holding it together. Then, she removed a single turtle plastron oracle and held it up to him.

“Your father’s voyage,” she said, so vaguely that Yixing was confused for a moment. What of his father’s voyage? 

“Madame Diviner, seeing that the King is being held hostage by the rebels, I doubt that the voyage will be completed at this time,” General Sun said, stepping in.

“Unfortunately, we have more pressing, more serious matters to attend to.,” he said. “If we wait too long, the rebels will solidify their hold on the government. Even if we do reinstate the King eventually, if we wait too long, it leaves too much time for them to create disciples of the people. We lose the sense of continuity—,”

“It is this ‘continuity’ you speak of that has me so concerned,” the old woman said. She turned to Yixing again. There was a sense of urgency in her face and in her voice. It spooked the prince somewhat.

“Your Highness, please consider this,” she said, coming closer to Yixing. He could smell the smoke and see the soot on her face from hours of performing pyromancy. Her voice was hollow.

“The storming of the palace, your father being taken hostage, your family being killed, could be the result of your bloodline’s finished contract with the Sea Goddess.”

Yixing sighed. Not this again.

“Old Bi Yu, please, this is hardly the time—,” he tried to steer her away but she reached out and grabbed his wrist.

“The time is upon us,” she said, holding his gaze with her eerie grey eyes. “Yixing, this is all happening because of the prophecy. The one, etched in the crackles of these oracle bones, given to your ancestors by Mazu herself. The 1,000 years of rule are finished, you must journey to the Realm of the Goddess and renew the Mandate. Tell the captain to set a course for the Cave of the Goddess. Bury these bones, bring her a gift as tribute, only then will you be able to restore your family’s name. Only then will all this be settled.”

Yixing looked hard at the Old Woman. He felt a cold shiver running down his spine while his mind retreated deep into the depths of his psyche. His vision was suddenly filled with images of a vast ocean, swirling and writhing in pain. He felt overcome by the strangest sensation, as though he’d been pushed to the edge of a cliff and made to look down. All this was interrupted when the ship’s captain came forward.

“I am afraid the course has been set, already, Madame,” he said. “In waiting for the prince to board, we have already delayed too long. The Mountain King is waiting for His Highness, and we have other business to attend.”

Old Bi Yu looked at Yixing again. Her eyes asked no question, they merely wait for him to speak. Yixing did not know what to do. He had never really believed in things like prophecies and Sea Goddesses. Nor did he really care for a long voyage to a mythical place. He sighed and looked the old woman in the eye with an apologetic glance.

“Your Highness,” she said. Yixing gulped.

“I’m not going, Old Bi Yu,” he said, taking his wrist away from her grasp. He turned to the rest of the men. 

“General Sun,” Yixing called out. “Please make all necessary arrangements. I’ll speak to whoever you want me to. And Captain Huang.”

The captain turned to Yixing. He could tell the boy was trying hard to be a prince in this dire hour. But the captain was aware that he was also just a boy who had been through more than anyone should have be put through.

“Please bring me news of my father soon,” Yixing said. Captain Huang nodded. Then, he pushed the tray closer to Yixing.

“Eat your breakfast.”

 

—

 

The pigeon loft was a room above the captain’s cabin that he twenty cubbies to house forty homing pigeons. A small hole in the back of the room allowed the messenger birds to come and go. Xiaohe let herself into the loft and looked at the pigeons. She wasn’t sure how to choose one. As unhappy as she was to see the prince again, she was thankful that he didn’t seem to remember who she was. Whether that be because he never really knew what she looked like in the first place or because he had gone through a lot in the last 24-hour cycle, she couldn’t tell. Either way, she was glad of the anonymity. She thought she had left her old life back in Ash Town, but evidently, the prince was not yet done with her. 

As she reached out to choose a pigeon at random, she noticed the lines of her palm again. The prince’s left palm had a deep, curved Fate Line that broke the Heart Line. She remembered that much. When she looked at it and deciphered its meaning, she would have never guessed that the great, cataclysmic life event that the line foretold would have been this. Even for a prince, this seemed like a bit much for the Fates to bestow.

The pigeon cooed as she lifted it from its perch with both hands. That was when she noticed that a pigeon was missing. Every one of the cubbies held two pigeons, but this one held just one. Odd, Xiaohe thought. She looked around the room just in case it was behind her. She wrinkled her brow and looked suspiciously at the pigeon in her hand,s as though accusing it of eating its brother or something. Coincidentally, that was when a pigeon flew in through the hole above. Xiaohe raised an eyebrow at the birds. She wasn’t sure what to make of the strange occurrence. She put the pigeon back down and climbed up onto a stool to reach the one that had flew in through the hole. She grabbed its leg and pulled it closer before grabbing the message capsule on its back. There was a piece of paper in it. 

Xiaohe fished it out with her finger and unrolled the paper.

_Have taken to the sea. Secure the bones. Kill prince at earliest chance._

Xiaohe scowled at the message. What did this mean? Who was it for? She was in the middle of deciphering the ominous message when the door suddenly opened. When the crew member entered, Xiaohe was taken back by the fact that she knew this man. He was the one from the The Blue Parrot, the one who was there when she read the prince’s palm. 

Luo Zhixiang stood in the door and stared at the Cabin Boy, who was up on a stool and clutching a pigeon. Xiaohe suddenly understood. She realized what was happening here. 

A betrayal.

“Boy,” Zhixiang said, stepping closer to the Cabin Boy. “Give that to me.”

She closed her palm over the message while the man narrowed his eyes at her. Xiaohe knew she had to get back to the captain’s cabin. Warn them. But first, she would have to make it past this man. She clenched her fists. Zhixiang lunged at the Cabin Boy just as she tried to bolt toward the door. He grabbed her around the waist and shoved her back. Xiaohe hit her shoulder against the nest, sending the birds flying about the room. The scattered feathers clouded her vision. She felt the man jumping on her. She dodged by rolling to the side. He pressed his knee to the small of her back, and Xiaohe let out a whimper of pain. Still, she held onto the slip of paper. Zhixiang grabbed her wrist and tried to pry her fingers open.

“Give it to me!” he snarled. Xiaohe grunted, but seeing that his head was right above hers, she jerked her chin upwards, hitting his nose with the back of her head. He let go of her wrist, hands flying to the bridge of his nose. Xiaohe leapt up and ran toward the door. He grabbed a hold of her ankle and she fell to the ground again. 

“Let me go!” she shouted, not caring if her voice sounded too feminine. She pulled herself free of his grasp and she bolted out onto the deck. 

“He’s a rebel spy!” she shouted, alarming the crew. “There’s a rebel spy onboard! Captain!”

Luo Zhixiang had recovered, and when he appeared again in the doorway, his bloodied nose made him look like the devil incarnate. He chased after Xiaohe again, paying no mind to the attention they had drawn. The sailors looked between the panicked Cabin Boy and the bloody sailor in pursuit. Some dropped their mops and ran to lend aid. Xiaohe burst through the doors of the captain’s cabin just as ZHixiang caught her by the waist again. She grabbed a handful of a soldier’s sleeve to keep herself from being pulled away. 

“He’s a spy!” she shouted.

“ _What is the meaning of this_?!” cried the ship’s captain, his eyes livid. 

“Eunuch Jun, explain yourself!” said the Quarter Master.

Xiaohe sunk down to her knees, wriggling herself free of Luo ZHixiang’s grasp. A soldier held him back. 

“Will someone explain what this uproar all about!” the captain shouted. 

“The Cabin Boy is a thief, captain!” Luo Zhixiang shouted. “He’s stolen from me!”

“I’m not a thief!” Xiaohe shouted back. 

“Luo Zhixiang?” everyone turned quiet when the prince suddenly stood and looked at his friend with the bloody nose. Yixing walked forward. “What’s happening? How are you here right now? You escape the palace?”

Yixing took a step forward, but Xiaohe shouted.

“Don’t, Your Highness!” Xiaohe said. “He’s working for the rebels!”

“Impossible,” Yixing whispered to the Cabin Boy. “He’s a friend.”

“He’s a traitor!”

“Hold your tongue, Jun!” Quarter Master said. Xiaohe was grabbed and held back by another one of the soldiers, but she wrestled her hand free and stretched it out to the Captain of the Guard. 

“Don’t listen to that liar!” Zhixiang shouted.

“He’s a traitor!” Xiaohe said. “I intercepted this message! He was sent to kill Your Highness!” 

The soldier tried to grab her wrist, but Captain Huang held out his hands. When Xiaohe’s fingers unfurled, the message fell into the captain’s hands. Zhixiang began to struggle against the soldier hold him back. Yixing went over to Captain Huang to see what all the fuss was about. When he read the message, he looked stunned at Zhixiang. Captain Huang’s jaw tensed as he, too, looked at the man. An advisor’s son he had been. 

"Zhixiang, what is this? Is what he’s saying true?" Yixing asked, his look earnest. ZHixiang didn't speak, but a scowl made its way onto his face. His silence was more telling than anything he could have said. Yixing clenched his teeth, torn between heartbreak and anger.

"You’re a spy?" Yixing said quietly. "Why? Haven’t I been a friend to you?"

Zhixiang fumed. The soldiers held onto his arms, pulling him back, but the venom in his gaze was enough to hurt the prince.

"How long did you think you could suppress us?" Zhixiang growled. "My father was a _fool_ , serving the likes of you. Not anymore. The Age of Zhang is ending. It’s time for the People to rise up!"

Captain Huang intervened on the scene, putting himself between the traitor and the prince. The ship's captain motioned for the men to take him out of the room. Xiaohe watched, still sprawled on the ground, as the man who floored her in the pigeon nest was dragged away by soldiers. He still fought and struggled, chanting the revolutionary chant:  _Down with Zhang!_

"Take him away! Put him in the brig."

Meanwhile, Captain Huang looked back at the message. Yixing looked down at the script and furrowed his brows. 

"What does this mean?" he asked. The ship's captain took a close look at it before walking over to the maps again. It couldn't have been good.

"It appears the rebels have a ship," the captain said. "And they know where we are. They are in pursuit."

"What are they after?" Yixing demanded. "What bones?"

"The oracle bones most likely," Captain Huang answered.

"Why?"

"Who knows,' the ship's captain said, gethering his things and taking his leave. "Excuse me, I need to have a word with the Sailing Master and Gunpowder Master. We need to make haste if we’re to beat the rebels or be ready if we have to fight them off."

As the captain left, Xiaohe found herself alone with the prince and the Captain of the Guard. She finally stood up and brushed herself off just as Yixing sat in a chair and looked at Captai Huang again.

"Where’s Old Bi Yu?" Yixing asked, concerned.

"In another cabin."

Yixing furrowed his brows again. Everything was so strange. A  _coup d'etat_  forced him into exile, stowed away on a ship bound for the Mountain Kingdom, yet the rebels seemed almost hell bent on killing everyone in his family. Was it not enough to simply have them out of the way?

"Shouldn’t we station some of the soldiers there?" Yixing suggested. "The rebels are after the bones after all."

Captain Huang nodded. The pair of them finally looked back at the Cabin Boy who still stood by the doorway, eyes wide and a slightly shaken. Captain Huang walked toward the boy and stopped just in front of him.

"Eunuch Jun," Captain Huang said.  His voice was steady and there was almost half of a smile on his face. "Thank you for your loyalty."

 

—

 

It was evening before the pigeon that the captain dispatched returned with tidings from the mainland. Xiaohe had been asked to retrieve the message once again and bring it to the prince. She didn't read it this time. When the message found itself in Captain Huang's hands, he waited until there was privacy in the chamber to present it to Yixing. He knew it wouldn't be good news. Yixing had been sitting in the alcove by the window, staring out the black sky when the captain entered. Huang Lei stared at the young prince sadly and then sighed as he unrolled the paper and read it.

"What news from the capital, _S_ _hifu_?" Yixing asked, his heart pounding. 

Captain Huang sighed as he looked up from the slip of paper. 

"I am sorry, Yixing," Captain Huang said. "The People's Army held a trial for your father, to try him for his trespasses against the people. He was found guilty, and they executed him."

He waited for Yixing to react, but the prince remained silent. He could see the young man trying hard to remain princely in this time of grief. His breathing was even, but the look of absolute defeat was apparent in his eyes. The only thing worse than feeling broken is feeling numb. And numb was what Yixing felt. Numb, and lost. He pressed his lips together and turned his eyes back to the darkness of the outside. His voice was hollow when he spoke

"Thank you, Captain."


	6. The Oath

 

Before she joined the pantheon of gods and goddesses in Heaven, people say that the Sea Goddess, Mazu, was a regular young woman. Filled with a deep love for her family and a strong spiritual connection with the sea. So great were here talents in the supernatural that her parents raised her in the teachings of the Tao. Like the ancestors and descendants of Zhang, she, too, grew up in a house near the ocean, and her brothers and father were sailors and fishermen. 

It is said that, one night, when the sea was especially violent, her brothers and father were out fishing and their boats were thrashed by the waves. Safe in her room, Mazu sat and entered a deep trance, in which she entered the spirit realm and stretched herself out to the sea. Deep in this trance, she reached out and saved her brothers from a treacherous death. But just as her spirit was slouching toward her father’s boat, back in the house, her mother entered the room and roused Mazu. The trance broken, she lost her father to the storm. 

Torn apart by her grief, she ran straight to the beach and jumped into the water. She swam and swam until her arms ached, crying out to her lost father. Until she could swim no more and she, too, was lost to the sea. Touched by the girl’s filial love and impressed by her supernatural ability, the gods saw it only fit that she join them in Heaven, to keep watch over the Southern Seas. 

Yixing had heard the story before. Many versions of it existed. Some say that she had saved her father after all, and then one day, she ascended the hill where the Palace was situated, where she met a Tao monk who showed her the way to Heaven. Others say that she never married, though she was courted by two demons who became her friends and guardians, instead. Yixing had never cared much which of the stories was the most true because he didn’t believe in Mazu. 

He was taking dinner in the captain’s cabin with Old Bi Yu when he noticed the goddess’ likeness painted on a scroll that hung on the wall. It was similar to the many likenesses of Mazu he had see on temple walls. It depicted the goddess as a great lady; immense, dressed in the lavish robes and opulent jewels of an empress. She was standing — firm and steadfast — on the tempest-rocked waters of the Southern Sea. Her arm stretched out in blessing toward the fleet of ships painted in the corner of the composition. Two demons, painted slightly smaller, one red and one blue, hovered on either side, dancing with twisted grimaces on their faces. There was a look of meditative calm on the goddess’ white face.

“Many Imperial ships have such a painting hanging in the wall of the captain’s cabin,” the old woman said, seeing the young prince looking curiously at the scroll. “To bless the ship, its captain, the crew. For a safe journey.”

Yixing tilted his head, not quite sure how to respond. He had wanted to say something witty, some snide comment about why—if the goddess had _so_ _bountifully_ blessed this ship and its journey—they had been caught in the throes of a storm nevertheless. The prince and the Diviner had to hold their plates and cups steady. Outside, the wind was incessant in its howling. The _Chimera_ fell to the mercy of the writhing, rolling, undulating waters. Waves thrashed against her side, making her lurch back and forth, exposing her belly to the air and her crew to the unforgiving elements. 

Up on the deck, the men scurried about, tying down cargo and cannons. The captain shouted for the sails to be furled, to spare them from the wrath of the wind. Rain pelted their faces, the salt water spray stung their eyes and nostrils. The Sailing Master grappled with the wheel as the First Officer climbed aboard the helm.

“Captain!” the First Officer shouted. “The storm is too strong! We have to make port!”

“I’m aware of that, First Officer!” the captain shouted. “As soon as you sight a port, _please_ , tell someone!”

“Captain!” shouted another voice. It came from above, the voice of a rigger. The bridge staff looked up at attention. The rigger pointed behind them. “There’s a ship, sir! A ship following us!”

When the crew collectively turned and looked past the stern of the ship, they saw that the rigger was right. Out beyond the haze of furious rain and mist, the fin-shaped white sails of an Imperial ship rose up above the crests of waves, close enough for them to see the faces of the men aboard. And coming closer still. The revolution was upon them.

Xiaohe ran to the port side of the vessel once again, looking at the ship that was quickly gaining on them. Out of the captain’s cabin, the prince, the Diviner, and the Captain of the Guard emerged and joined the Sailing Master on the bridge. Yixing shielded his eyes from the torrent of rain and bent his knees against the shove of the wind. The loose parts of his clothing whipped and whirled about his limbs. When he looked into the eye of the storm and saw the white sails of the ship, he was struck dumb when he realized that he recognized it.

“Captain Huang!” Yixing shouted above the roar of the storm. “It’s the _Relentless_!”

“What?” the captain shouted back.

“It’s the ship my father commissioned for his voyage!” Yixing said. “It’s the ship he was going to use for his journey! “

“She’s been commandeered, Your Highness!” the captain of the _Chimera_ bellowed. “There are rebels at the helm!”

“They’ll try to board the ship!” Captain Huang shouted. “Damn it, isn’t there anything we can do to make this thing go faster?!”

“ _We are doing everything we can_!”

The crew rushed about the ship. Men stood by their cannons, grabbed their swords from below. They worried over the wet gunpowder. On the stern of the ship, a sailor beat the drums. Battle stations, all. Yixing stood struck at the tail end of the ship, staring at the _Relentless_ , as immobile and overcome as though paralyzed in a nightmare. At the bow of the _Relentless_ , a figure stood, eyes locked on the prince.

 

—

 

The leader of the People’s Army stood on the bow of the _Relentless_. While the storm swirled in the sea and sky, the woman kept her eyes on the prize ahead. Her men struggled to keep the ship steady in he rocky waters. Her fortitude in the face of adversity inspired them. She turned to the man standing beside her, who held onto the railing of the ship and looked to her for further instruction. 

“Make her go faster,” Cheng said to her right-hand man. 

“Aye!” he shouted. He turned to the men and barked orders for the ship to go faster. They had to catch up to the _Chimera_ in order to board it. 

“Your orders, Chancellor?” the man asked. She turned to him with narrow eyes. 

“We board the ship! Bring me those oracle bones and the Diviner,” she said. “Kill the rest of them. And find Luo Zhixiang, he’ll still be onboard.”

The rain and wind was joined by the rumbled of thunder. The _Relentless_ , true to her name, sailed onward, gaining on the _Chimera_. 

 

—

 

The ship was catching up to them. Captain Huang frantically looked around the deck at the crew. The _Chimera_ may have been a large ship, but it was a trading vessel. Built to carry large amounts of cargo and to be crewed by as few men as possible. Twenty or thirty men in all, most of them ordinary seamen and merchants. And he with only six soldiers and a general in his company. If the rebels boarded, they would be doomed. And the last of the Zhang family line would be lost.

“Yixing!” Captain Huang shouted. He grabbed Yixing and the Diviner by the arm and shoved them toward the stairs that led back to the cabin area. 

“Barricade yourselves in the cabins!” the captain shouted, leading them back down he steps. Both Yixing and the Diviner stumbled down the steps and were pushed into the hallway back to the captain’s cabin. Huang Lei racked his brain for a plan. No matter what happened, the rebels must not get to the prince of the Diviner. That much he knew. But he was running out of ideas.

Yixing stumbled over a chair as Captain Huang shoved him into the cabin and then slammed the doors shut. The Captain locked the door with a board from the outside. Spying the cabin boy in the hall, he grabbed him by the sleeve. 

Xiaohe yelped when the Captain of the Guard grabbed her forcefully and dragged her to stand in front of the doorway. Before she could protest, the Captain had taken a dagger out from his belt and pushed the hilt into her hand. 

“ _You_ , Cabin Boy!” Huang Lei shouted above the crashing of the waves. Xiaohe’s short hair stuck to her forehead as she looked up at the man towering over her with a desperate look on his face.

“You will stand here and guard this door, do you understand?” he shouted into her face. Xiaohe couldn’t wrestle her sleeve out of his grip. She was too stunned and struck by the man’s raised voice to protest. She nodded quietly. Stupidly.

“Yes, sir!” she barked in reply. He shoved her back against the door.

“Whatever happens!” Huang Lei shouted. “If the rebels board this ship, you will _strike down_ _any man_ who goes near this cabin! You will stand here and fight, and you will not leave this spot! Do you hear me, boy?” 

“Yes, sir!” Xiaohe shouted simply because she didn’t know what else to reply. She was hardly in a position to refuse. The captain let go of her sleeve and she fell back onto her feet, dagger in hand and eyes wide with panic over what she had just agreed to do. She had fought people before. Fighting was something one inevitably learned to do growing up in the streets, but killing was something different altogether. Huang Lei turned and ran back to the helm before Xiaohe could protest further. She looked at the dagger in her hands and then at the tempest swirling around them. Everyone was running around, fighting over whether they should try to outrun the ship, outlast the storm, turn and fight, or simply give up. Xiaohe was in the middle of deciding for herself when in the corner of her eye, she saw the white sails. The _Relentless_ had caught up. 

On the starboard side, the bow of the _Relentless_ glided past until it met the bow of the _Chimera._ The captains gave their orders to fire the cannons. The ear-splitting blasts rang out. 

Ear-splitting blasts rang out. Cannon ball slipped into the sides of both ships. The waves devoured fallen men. They crashed and flooded compartments. There were shouts and cries of pain. When the sides of both ships crashed together, everyone was rattled from their battle stations. Then, the rebels had only to jump over the sides to board the ship. Xiaohe tightened her grip on the dagger. The slaughter began immediately. The less-experienced crewmen of the _Chimera_ fell easily to the soldiers of the People’s Army. 

Xiaohe screamed when a man rushed at her, sword in hand. And she with only a dagger for protection. She dodged his blade and it lodged itself in the door. Thinking quickly, she ducked under him and unseated the dagger. She wasn’t thinking. She was acting on instinct and adrenaline. She plunged the dagger into the man’s side. He let out a low snarl before swinging his sword toward her again. Xiaohe fell backward. The dagger was still in the man’s ribs. She was no longer armed. She looked at the door to the cabin and remembered that she had promised not to let anyone near it. So she pushed herself up and lunged at the man’s legs. He fell down onto the deck just as another soldier approached. Xiaohe rolled onto her back and kicked at the other soldier’s knee. It buckled and he bent over to grab it. When he did, she kicked his face. She tried to reach the dagger again, but this time she was the one kicked in the gut. The soldier grabbed her by the shirt and threw her against the wall. 

Her vision blurred as the blunt pain began to spread. The man pulled the dagger from his side with a grunt. He walked toward the door, and something snapped in Xiaohe. Ignoring the pain in her shoulder blades and the pain in her stomach, she stood and launched herself at the man’s back. She let out a low growl as she caught him in a chokehold and then leaned back with all her weight. When the man reared back, he tripped over a raised plank and fell on her. When they crashed back against the deck, Xiaohe had the wind knocked out of her lungs. Her arms let go of the man’s neck. He recovered faster than she could. With her bindings tight against her chest, she couldn’t breathe properly. Her vision began to blur again. The bindings dug into her ribs. Her breath was raspy and shallow. The man stood and grabbed hold of his sword again.

“You little _shit_!” he screamed. Xiaohe was still gathering her wits when he raised the blade above her head, poised to drive it straight through her chest. But in the next instant, someone had stepped over Xiaohe’s fallen body and stabbed the man with a sword. Captain Huang took his sword from the man’s body and made sure he was good and dead before casting the corpse aside. He fought off two, three more soldiers before he grabbed the Cabin Boy’s shirt and helped him stand.

“Are you alright, boy?!” he shouted above the storm.

“Behind you!” Xiaohe just managed to shout. Huang Lei spun around and blocked another man’s blade. Xiaohe scrambled to grab the dagger. While Huang Lei was locked in battle with the swordsman, Xiaohe slashed the tendon in the soldier’s knees. He screamed as he fell to his knees and Huang Lei finished him off. The captain turned and looked at the carnage unfolding on the decks of the _Chimera_. A cannon ball had shot down both the ship’s masts. Water was flooding every compartment below. They could no longer stay on the ship. Huang Lei bolted back to the cabin door and kicked it down. Inside, Yixing stood in front of the Diviner.

“Captain Huang!” Yixing shouted. Huang Lei went inside and grabbed both the prince and the Diviner by the arm. 

“You’re getting off the ship!” Huang Lei shouted. “Both of you! There is a lifeboat at the stern! Follow me!”

Before anyone had time to protest, the captain had grabbed them both and began dragging them out the door. Immediately, they were rushed by soldiers again. Huang Lei fought them off, others were taken by the storm. Quickly, he ran them up to the stern, where a lifeboat hung just off the back of the ship. While the bloodbath unfolded all around them, Huang Lei grabbed onto the pulley that would lower the raft into the water. Yixing climbed into the raft first and then reached out to help the old woman. She clutched a package close to her chest, and she was as light as chicken bones when Yixing lifted her into the boat. He turned to the captain.

“Captain Huang!” Yixing said. “Get into the boat now!” 

But Huang Lei had other plans. The thunder was becoming even more menacing. The waves rocked the ship and threw off anyone who wasn’t careful. The Cabin Boy had followed closely behind. Captain Huang grabbed Xiaohe by the fistful once again. She groaned as the man brought the Cabin Boy close to his face. He shouted again. All around them, the storm railed. The ship would not last much longer. She would go down before long. Behind them, the rebels were locked still in a battle with the crew. Huang Lei held the boy’s gaze as intensely as possible. Yixing would need protection. He needed to bind the Cabin Boy to that purpose one way or another. Xiaohe’s heart raced. 

“Do you freely take the Oath of the Order of the White Lion?!” Huang Lei shouted. Xiaohe was confused.

“What?” she said.

“Will you freely take the Oath, man!?” Huang Lei shouted again. Thunder split the sky. Xiaohe couldn’t tell if she was crying or if it was just the rain. Caught up in the urgency of the moment, she had no time to think about her answer. She nodded, frantically.

“Yes!” she said, not fully aware of what it was she was agreeing to. Huang Lei held onto her still.

“Then _swear to everything_ I am about to say to you!” Huang Lei threatened. “Do you swear to be eternally loyal to Zhang, the Ancestors, and your sworn brethren?!”

“I swear!” Xiaohe muttered.

“And do you swear to faithfully keep and enforce the laws of the Heavenly Twin Demons Empire?!”

“I swear!”

Huang Lei shook the Cabin Boy, forcing him to hold his gaze throughout the entire oath. 

“And do you swear to protect and defend the law, the family, the Ancestors, and your sworn brethren?”

“Yes, I swear!”

“And do you swear to fulfill your oath _unto death_ , and to fight unto the _last drop of blood_?” 

Huang Lei shook the boy again, and Xiaohe’s eyes grew wide. Unto _death_? Unto the last drop of blood? She could not fully grasp the true gravity of this moment. She was distracted by the storm and the rain, by the shouts of rage and agony elsewhere on the ship. Distracted by the desperate desire to survive. She swallowed hard and nodded.

“I _swear_!"

Huang Lei released the boy. Xiaohe fell back on her rocky legs, and the captain grabbed the dagger out of her hands. To complete the ritual, Huang Lei unsheathed the dagger and swiftly slashed at Xiaohe’s cheek. She gasped at the sudden flash of pain on her face. She was left with a shallow, horizontal cut just below her left eye. In time, it would leave a scar. A symbol of the White Lion guard’s willingness to face adversity, to welcome death with no fear, and to shed blood to protect the family. 

Before Xiaohe could even reach up to touch the cut, Huang Lei pressed his palm to her cheek. He wiped at the blood with his thumb. As he looked Xiaohe in the eyes, she was struck by the gentleness of this gesture. The third and final part of the ritual. The caress. To symbolize one’s entrance into an order of honor, fraternity, and friendship. It was the only time Xiaohe could recall anyone touching her face in so gentle a manner. Lightning lit the sky once more. Thunder crashed.

In the next second, the captain pressed something else into Xiaohe’s hands. He made her fingers wrap around the hilt of his sword. She looked him sternly in the eye, and Huang Lei held her gaze. His look was different this time. Less urgent and more desperate. The Captain of the Guard had dropped his guard just this once and gave Xiaohe a glimpse of the man behind the scar. The man whose love for the royal family extended far beyond the bindings of an oath. Huang Lei kept his hand pressed to the boy’s face and swallowed. His eyes pleaded with the youth.

“Please. Take care of him,” he whispered. Xiaohe had no time to respond. The captain shoved her backwards. She winced in pain as fell into the lifeboat with the prince. Yixing stretched his arm out to Huang Lei.

“You next, _Shifu_!” Yixing shouted. “Jump in!”

“I must stay behind and fight, Your Highness!” Huang Lei shouted.

“ _No!_ ” Yixing said. “Get in the lifeboat, _Shifu_! You’ve done your duty, _get in the boat_!”

Huang Lei moved over to the pulley to lower the lifeboat. It was heavy, meant to be handled by two men. He grabbed onto the rope and began to lower the boat. Yixing shouted and complained, pleading for the captain to get into the boat with them. Huang Lei ignored the boy’s pained shouts and continued lowering the boat into the water. 

 _I am sorry, Yixing_ , Huang Lei thought. 

Yixing looked up at the men lowering the boat and he shouted as loud as his lungs would let him. _Get in the boat! Get in here!_ He begged Captain Huang to join them in the raft. But the look on the captain’s face was one of calm conviction. Yixing almost hated him for it. The lower the boat got, the more helpless Yixing felt. Helpless to rescue his master and friend. Helpless to be anything other than a burden. But in the next moment, an arrow had flown through the air and lodged itself in Captain Huang’s shoulder. The man cried outing pain. His hold on the rope slipped, and Yixing barely had time to shout “No!” before the raft fell straight into the water, into oblivion.


	7. Bound and Unbound

The first signs of consciousness that Yixing registered came in the form of pain. Pain in his arms, legs. Pain in his head, in his stomach. When his eyes began to flicker open, they were savaged by a shock of white light. For a brief moment, the prince concluded that he must have been dead. But the ache all over his body only intensified as he came to.

Yixing sat up. His body shook with the effort. He found himself lying in a bed of fine white sand, his clothing damp and cold. The sky was thick with clouds. All around him, the scenery was alien. As he gathered his wits about him, he realized that the storm had thrashed them about before eventually washing them up on the shores of an uncharted island. But even more disconcerting was the miles upon miles upon miles of empty, open ocean. 

The prince stood on shaky legs. The last thing he remembered was the lifeboat falling into the water, Captain Huang Lei being shot with an arrow, Eunuch Jun swearing the oath of the Order of the White Lion, and the _Chimera_ disappearing in the storm. But the ship was nowhere in sight. Neither was the _Relentless_. Or any ships, for that matter. 

Yixing swallowed and tried to keep panic from grabbing hold of him. He was whispering curses under his breath. First order of business was to find his companions: Old Bi Yu, the Diviner, and Eunuch Jun. Yixing turned and started walking down one side of the shore. He hugged his arms around his torso, trying to keep the warmth of his body from escaping into the icy bite of the wind. A few meters away, he spied the lifeboat and the Diviner laying facedown in the sand right by it. He dashed toward her.

“Madame Diviner!” he shouted, his voice hoarse. “Old Bi Yu!” 

Yixing grabbed her by the arms and had to drag the Old Woman away from the shallow waves, where she had lain throughout the night. 

“Madam Diviner!” Yixing shouted, taking the old woman’s face between his hands and lightly slapping her cheeks. Yixing lowered his head and pressed his ears to the woman’s chest. Her body was growing cold but there was a light thumping in her ribcage. Yixing continued to call out to the Diviner, switching between all her titles and names, hoping to get a response. Her heartbeat was weak, but still going. Her hands were already as cold as death, though. The old woman was suffering from hypothermia after being in the water too long. The sun was hidden behind an overcast sky, and the Diviner’s weakened body would not be able to generate enough heat fast enough on its own. How many more of those who were close to him would die in the span of three days? 

His mother. His father. Youqing and Liang. Captain Huang. And now Old Bi Yu. He heard a wheezing noise. Yixing bent his ear down to the Diviner.

“Old Bi Yu!” he said. “Stay with me, Madame!”

Yixing reached for the clasps of his shirt, thinking to wrap it around the old woman to help her get warmer. But the woman started to reach up at him again. Her raspy breath was light against his ear. 

“Your Highness,” the Diviner whispered with the thinnest of breaths. “You need to make the journey. Bear gifts. Bury the bones. Renew the mandate. You are the last one.”

“Madam—,” Yixing called out, trying to keep her conscious. But with the last of her strength, the Diviner pressed something against Yixing’s chest. The prince grasped onto the bulky package, wrapped in gray cloth just as the Diviner took a sharp inhale of air and expired. 

“Madame? Madame?” Yixing called, shaking the old woman. But it was no use. The prince had never had a very genial relationship with the old woman when she was alive. In his childhood and throughout his youth, he had only ever gone to see her on special occasions, either happy or sad. Still, a life is a life. Another person dead. Another piece of his life destroyed. When her body grew limp, Yixing bent over and buried his face in his hands. He opened his mouth to scream, but his throat had gone dry.

He sat and stared out at the emptiness of the sea for what seemed like an eternity. He was in the midst of making plans to bury the old woman when he suddenly remembered the third member of their group. Yixing jumped to his feet again. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted as loud as his hoarse throat would let him.

“Eunuch Jun!” he shouted. He pulled Old Bi Yu’s body out of the reach of the waves before taking off down the shore again. He couldn’t remember what had happened after they fell into the sea. Only that they were beat by the waves and tossed around by the storm. Who was to say that Eunuch Jun even survived? But in the middle of his thinking, Yixing spotted another body, lying in a dry spot just a few meters away from the tidal pools. 

“Eunuch Jun!” he shouted, running towards the boy. 

When he reached the Cabin Boy, Yixing knelt over him. He looked much younger than the prince, sixteen or seventeen maybe, and horridly skinny for a boy of that age. As with the old woman, Yixing pressed his ear to the boy’s chest. He listened and watched for movement. He could hear a shallow, raspy noise coming out of the boy’s throat but no movement in his chest. Yixing cupped the lad’s face and lightly shook him. The cut on the boy’s face was no longer bleeding, but the blood had dried to a thick crust. 

“Eunuch Jun! Can you hear me?” Yixing shouted. “Wake up! Come on!”

Yixing heard the raspy noise. The cabin boy’s eyes were partially lidded, and he was beginning to move to fingers. He was conscious. In spite of everything, Yixing smiled. At least one of his companions had survived. 

“Can you hear me, Jun?” Yixing said, bringing his face close to the boy’s. Eunuch Jun’s lips were moving, but Yixing could only make out a word:

“…off…” the cabin boy breathed. 

“Off?” Yixing said. What did that mean? He saw the boy grasping at his chest. The prince understood. He must have suffered an injury to the chest of some sort. Thinking quickly, Yixing grabbed the clasps of the cabin boy’s shirt and undid them. When he tore the fabric away, he was expecting to see a festering, bloody wound of some kind. But there were bindings instead, wrapped tight against the boy’s torso. So tight that the skin around the cloth was beginning to turn pink and purple. 

“…off…can’t…breathe…off…” the boy breathed again with the shallowest of breaths. 

Eunuch Jun’s face was twisted up in pain and he reached the knot at his side, where the bindings had been secured. Every sigh, every breath was painful for the cabin boy. Yixing understood. The boy must have wrapped it around a chest wound. It was restricting his lung capacity now. The prince grabbed the knot securing the bindings and began to undo it. When the knot was loose, Yixing started pulling the bindings away. The cabin boy was too weak to protest. Too weak to care about hidden identities or propriety. 

The bindings were already three-quarters of the way off before Yixing began to notice something was strange. The slimness of the boy’s waist, the flare of his hips, the narrowness of his shoulders, the general slenderness of the Cabin Boy’s body. When the bindings came off, Xiaohe filled her starved lungs with air again with a deep breath, followed by a fit of rapid gasping and coughing. 

Yixing’s cheeks filled with heat at the sight of her bared breasts. They were still flattened against her chest, but they were unmistakeable. The prince shot up to his feet again. He dropped the bindings as though they were rattlesnakes and cast his gaze aside. 

Xiaohe continued heaving in deep gulps of air, savoring the feel of her rib cage contracting and expanding with each breath. She sat up with a groan, shots of pain running up and down her spine. She touched the tender skin around her torso, where the bindings had dug into her body. 

“You—You’re—” Yixing stammered. Xiaohe froze and slowly turned to look at the prince. She grabbed the clasps of her shirt and began to cover herself. Her eyes grew as wide as his, and she didn’t know what to do or what to expect now that he knew her secret. Yixing looked the young woman up and down. He didn’t even know where to begin asking, or whether he should even ask. Too much had happened in the last few days. 

“Are you alright?” he asked instead. 


	8. A Spark

_Where in the world am I_? Xiaohe thought to herself as she stood at the coastline, staring into the horizon. It would be night soon. They would have to start a fire to keep them warm through the night and start thinking up strategies to get off this island. 

She turned her head to the left and glanced at the prince, who sat in the sand further down the beach. They had just finished burying Old Bi Yu. The prince was silent as he helped Xiaohe dig a grave for the Diviner, which proved difficult since the island was more sand than dirt. It posed the risk that wind or water might blow the sand off and expose the body to the elements. Xiaohe searched the island for stones to pile on top to remedy the problem. By the time they had a grave deep enough to lower a body into, their hands were worn and blistered, dirt had lodged itself under their fingernails. Through it all, the prince didn’t utter a word. 

Xiaohe almost felt bad that she wasn’t more sympathetic, but she was too busy trying to find a way off the island. She had stood beside him staring down at the stones piled on top of the grave, and Xiaohe hesitated reminding the prince that it wouldn’t do to mourn at this time. Grief was a paralytic, and at a time like this, they needed to be steadfast and focused. Especially if they planned on surviving. 

 _Ten more minutes_ , she thought to herself. Ten more minutes and then she would walk over and interrupt his cry-fest. He had pulled his knees up to his chest and hid his face. He had just lost everything, and Xiaohe decided to give him a bit of privacy.

She looked back at the distant horizon and sighed. Wherever civilization and salvation was, it was so far. Xiaohe began to take inventory of all the tools they had at their disposal. The island was small but it had no shortage of trees, dry grass, things they could burn to make a fire. Palm trees meant coconuts, so they would be able to eat. At her hip, there hung the sword the Captain of the Guard had given her. And there was the lifeboat. 

If they had extra clothing, they could have used the shirts to make sails. If help did not come fast enough, they could always take to the ocean again in the lifeboat. But she was left with just the one shirt she was wearing, and discarding it was not an option. She narrowed her eyes at the prince again. 

Although he knew her secret now, she was comforted by the fact that he wasn’t a very big man. And he was royal, meaning he had been pampered and spoiled all his life and Xiaohe was confident that she could take him in a fight if the need ever arose. But there was no way she was going back to chest-binding after it nearly killed her. She was taken out of her thoughts when the waves lapped up against her ankles.

Xiaohe jumped back, surprised by the sudden cold against her feet. She didn’t know the waves reached that far up the beach. But then the thought came to her that if the waves could reach her ankles, then they could probably also reach—

“The lifeboat,” she whispered to herself. She looked to the right, at the lifeboat stuck in the sand. The tide was rising. If they didn’t pull the boat further away from the water, it would just drift away. And they needed that boat.

Xiaohe ran toward the boat and started trying to tug it further up the beach. But the damned thing was too big and too heavy and too stuck for her to move on her own. She grabbed onto the sides and pulled as hard as she could, her arm muscles taut and her feet sinking into the sand. But the boat wouldn’t budge. 

“Your Highness!” she shouted down the beach. Another wave washed onto the sand, reaching farther up the beach. It was up to Xiaohe’s calves. The boat lifted for a moment with the wave and Xiaohe tugged on it again. But rather than pulling it up the beach, the riptide pulled it even further into the sea. Xiaohe shouted again.

“Hey!” she yelled down the beach, trying to get the prince’s attention. He didn’t so much as lift his head. She groaned in irritation.

“Hey! Help me!” she shouted. The tide came in again, and a second time, the boat was too heavy for her to pull. It was getting sucked in with every wave. “Damn this boat! Hey! Your Highness! _Woah_ —!”

Xiaohe’s hands slipped off the side of the boat as another powerful current swept her off her feet and the boat was lifted from its sandy resting place. Xiaohe scrambled to grab onto it again, but she couldn’t grab a hold of the lifeboat without plunging into the deep end of the water and getting sucked into the ocean along with it. 

“Damn it!” she cursed as the boat was sucked out sea and began drifting away. Xiaohe groaned and grit her teeth. _Damn it!_ There goes their chance at escape. She looked down the beach and found the prince still curled up and moping away. She was furious.

When she got out of the water, Xiaohe marched down the beach, right up to where Yixing was hunched over and hiding his face. She kicked the sand at him, and when his head shot up, his eyes were red and swollen. He looked at the sand she had kicked at him and then into her fuming eyes.

“What do you want?” he demanded. Xiaohe’s forehead creased in annoyance.

“Get up,” she said. Yixing scoffed at her but did not move. 

“ _Look_!” Xiaohe pointed at the lifeboat bobbing in the water, a too-far distance away from shore and getting farther away. 

“Isn’t that… our lifeboat?” Yixing asked. Xiaohe groaned.

“ _Yes_!” she said. “The tide was coming in, it got swept up in the rip currents! Are you deaf? What? Didn’t you hear me over there, shouting at you to help me pull it out?”

Yixing had a blank look on his face that made the girl want to punch him right between his puffy, red eyes. 

“No, I didn’t,” he said plainly. He stared hard at the lifeboat that was escaping without them and then he swallowed.

“What’ll we do now?” he asked. Xiaohe crossed her arms over her chest and scoffed. 

“Here’s what we’re going to do, _Your Highness_ ,” she said. “You are going to get up and stop moping around. I’m sorry your palace was burned to the ground, I really am—”

“Are you?” Yixing shouted back at her. “Maybe you haven’t been caught up, but I’ve just lost _everything_! Do you know how many people are out there trying to kill me? My entire family has been _murdered_ , my home _burned to the ground_ , every one who has been close to me is _dead_.”

“Maybe so,” Xiaohe said. “But at the moment, you and I are _still_ _alive_! And if you want to keep it that way, you’re going to have to conserve your fluids and _help me_ around here!”

“That’s right, I _am_ alive!” Yixing shouted, angry tears filling his eyes again. “But what for? Why me? Everyone I’ve ever loved is dead, and I will be, too, so what’s the point of fighting it now? I am completely _alone_ in this world!”

Xiaohe scoffed. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The prince might be ready to give up on life, but she wasn’t. She was nowhere near ready. She clenched her fists.

“ _Fine_!” she shouted. “But I, for one, am not going to wait for you and your endless, royal grief to subside anymore. In case you haven’t noticed, we are _stranded_ here! If you want to survive, a level-head will serve you better than your bereavement. Go on! Grieve! Cry your tears, I hope you drown in it! _I’m_ getting off this island!”

She turned on her heel and stalked off before Yixing could say anything in reply. The prince turned away from the retreating girl and looked into the ocean again. The lifeboat was too far out for them to retrieve now. The girl had walked further down the beach, and after a few minutes, her figure was a small dark spot in the distance. Yixing looked out at the horizon again. The sky was turning golden as the sun sank. Darkness would soon be upon them, but Yixing’s body and soul still felt too stone-heavy to move, weighted down by all the deaths. 

 

—

 

He’d been wandering around the island for all of ten minutes before the panic began to set in. Yixing had sat on the beach for all of two hours, wallowing in his own sorrow, when it dawned on him that this wasn’t going to go away. Whether he liked it or not, he was stranded on a small island in the middle of the ocean, and he would not survive if he continued to distract himself with his grief. There would be a time to mourn his fallen family and friends, but there would be no one to remember them anymore if he did not first take care of this situation. 

He had shouted for the Cabin Boy again, at first, but then he realized that through the Diviner’s burial, the unbinding of the girl’s chest, and the fiasco with the lifeboat, he had never asked for her name.

The island was small, but the forest was thick. Yixing had walked into it in search of firewood or something, but then he realized that he had no idea how to start a fire anyhow. The sun had sunk beyond the horizon and he had no idea how to find the beach again. By the time he made up his mind to go looking for the young woman, he was lost. 

“Hello?” he shouted. His voiced was swallowed up whole by the thickness of the forestry. The air was cold and damp, and he couldn’t see past his arm’s length. His heart rate sped up as a cold sweat began to collect on his brow.

“Miss?” he tried shouting. What in the world could her name be?

“Hello?” he shouted again. No answer. But there was a rustle in the trees. The prince froze. In the midst of all the panic and worry, he hadn’t even considered that they may not be the only ones on the island. As small as it was, it must be in the middle of the trade route. Anyone could be here along with them, including a variety of wild animals.

Yixing approached the noise carefully, wishing with all his might that he had the reliability of his eyes in the darkness. There was the sound of a broken twig. He whipped his head around. Nothing. He clenched his jaw, started stretching his hands out to grab onto something he could use as a weapon if need be. He was grasping vines from trees, leaves and branches, nothing that would lend itself to his need. 

The rustling got louder. 

“Who’s there?” he shouted, and from the thick cover of leaves and branches, the cabin boy emerged. Yixing sighed in relief. She, however, just stood there, unamused and arms filled with fallen branches. He could only make out her face as his eyes adjusted.

“What are you doing wandering around in here?” she asked. Yixing stuttered in his response. 

“I was… looking for you,” he said. He had never been someone with an immense amount of ego, but following their fight earlier that day, it did hurt his pride a little, admitting that he needed her. 

“In the forest?” she asked. “You were looking for me in here?”

“No, of course not!” Yixing said. “I just came in here to get firewood, and then I got lost, it was dark in here. Anyway, are you alright?”

Old habits die hard. Yixing felt his old etiquette training forcing him to consider the condition of the lady, though he knew already that she was more than capable. He heard her scoff softly.

“Am _I_ alright?” she asked. There was another rustling sound as she turned and walked. Yixing leapt to keep up with her.

“Wait!” he said. “Where are you going?”

“Back to camp,” she said.

“You’ve set up camp already?” Yixing asked. He was impressed. 

“Yes, I have,” she said plainly. 

“With a fire and food and everything?”

“Yes, I have,” she said. It was dark, but he could feel her staring at his face. 

“Oh, I see,” she said. “And you’re ready to join us, then, in the land of the living?”

Yixing sighed. When he rubbed the back of his neck, his muscles ached.

“Look, you were right,” he said. “There’ll be a time to mourn my family, but right now I have to keep my head on. A level-head will serve me better than grief at this moment.”

There was a pause.

“That’s right,” she said. Yixing waited for her to say something more, but when she stayed silent, he scoffed.

“Do you want me to apologize or grovel or something, or are you seriously not going to let me join you?” he said incredulously. “As you said, we’re both stranded on this island, _very much alive_. Don’t you think we should, you know, stay together? Don’t you think it’s better for us to be together?”

Unlike Yixing, Xiaohe did have a strong sense of pride. One of her many flaws. Although she had been content hearing him admit his mistakes, it irked her that he was also right about needing to stick together. This was a dire situation and separation would not help either of them. She sighed, adjusting the load of sticks and branches in her arms.

“Follow me,” she said. “And watch your step, there are snakes in here.”

Xiaohe had chosen to set up camp on the Northern part of the island. The two split the duties between gathering wood and greenery for a fire and gathering anything edible. Xiaohe had gotten a weak fire started and at least one fish that they could share between the two of them. She had stuck the broadsword Captain Huang had given her into the sand. They still felt weak and tired from their ordeal. They were dehydrated. They were bruised and battered, and Yixing was still mourning the loss of his family as well. As they sat by the fire, he suddenly remembered the cloth-bound pack that the Diviner had left with him. He reached for it and then unbound the knot that held the package together. 

Inside was a pack of Oracle bones, made from turtle plastrons. There were maybe ten in total. Yixing held them to the light of their small fire and traced the cracks with his fingers. He had seen the Diviner using them before. His father once ordered the Diviner to divine the reason for a new mole that had appeared on Yixing’s body when he was thirteen, and again that time his father wanted to know if the Princess from the Mountain Kingdom would be a good match for Yixing. The cracks in the bones apparently meant that the new mole, which had appeared on his ear, meant that he would be a wise prince who listened to the people, and the princess would be an adequate match, though not the best. In both cases, the interpretations had been recorded in ink directly on the bone.

But these bones had been through a lot in the past few days. The interpretations recorded in ink were washed away by the water, and the Diviner was no longer here to interpret the cracks again. 

He looked over at the young woman turning the fish over the fire. 

“I don’t suppose you know what these mean?” he asked, holding up one of the turtle plastrons. She looked at him, wondering if he was beginning to recognize her. It didn’t look like it. She shook her head.

“No, Your Highness,” she answered quietly. Yixing sighed in defeat. He turned the bone over in his hand, looking earnestly at the cracks as he sat on the sand. 

“I only ever saw these when my father had a question,” he said, still staring at the oracles. “Usually something trivial like whether my toothache would last or when was the most auspicious time to get a haircut. Now, they’re the key to everything, apparently. There must be something important on these old bones if the rebels want them that badly.”

Yixing was suddenly afraid. He had never believed much in all this magical mumbo jumbo, but now, they were the only things he had left from his old life, and he felt very keenly that they would be the key to his future as well. And he couldn’t understand a single crack of it.

“I just remembered,” Yixing said, making her look up at him again. “I don’t know your name. Your _real_ name, I mean. I’m supposing it’s not ‘Eunuch Jun’ seeing as you’re… a woman.”

She laughed weakly. She supposed that she had finally hit rock bottom. She may as well tell him her real name. 

“Han Xiaohe,” she said. 

“Zhang Yixing,” he introduced himself with a slight bow. He was trying to smile. “You… probably knew that, though.”

There was a short bit of silence before he spoke up again.

“Did the rest of the crew know?” he asked.

“Know what?”

“That you were in disguise.”

She’d almost forgotten. She looked at him, lights and shadows dancing on her face as the fire blazed.

“Of course not,” she said. 

“Why’d you do it?” he asked. Xiaohe sighed.

“Why did I do it? Disguise myself as a eunuch?” she said. “For protection, of course. Don’t you know how dangerous it is? A woman traveling alone with thirty men on a ship in the middle of nowhere? It’s not safe.”

Xiaohe had always supposed that if she had just swallowed up her pride and joined the women at The Blue Parrot, perhaps she would not have suffered so much. Courtesan life really was not that bad. If one entertained an especially wealthy client, she was showered with gifts and money. If she was an especially good courtesan, she could retire comfortably. But Xiaohe resisted that life simply because it had been the one her mother had chosen.

“But I suppose it was also because I was tired of being me,” Xiaohe surprised herself by confessing this. Not just to a prince, but also to a stranger. Xiaohe took a handful of sand and let it sift through her fist.

“I was running away,” she continued, looking at the ground. “I didn’t want to be a pickpocket anymore, and I didn’t want to live in brothels anymore, and I sure-as-hell wasn’t going to work for the woman at The Blue Parrot. So I ran away. Thought I’d go see the world or something, become a sailor, move up the ranks, no one would have to know I was a woman. Although, when I was praying for adventure, this is far from what I had in mind.”

Running away was something Yixing knew very well. He had been running from his responsibilities as heir all his life. Xiaohe caught him swallowing again, and she could see that he was holding his tears back, painfully. She almost scoffed at him again. A grown man blubbering like a child. But her heart softened, staring into his face. The life of the royal family had never interested her growing up. She was always too busy thinking about where her next meal was coming from, or where she would sleep that night to consider the Crown Prince. The world of the royals was so far away, it felt like another realm of reality to her. He was no better off than her, now. Worse, even, for he had lost more than she did.

“I _am_ sorry, you know,” she said softly, tossing another stick into the fire. Yixing looked at her, eyes wide.

“About your family, I mean,” Xiaohe said. “Despite everything I’ve said, I understand what you’re going through. I lost my family a long time ago. I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of injustice. I know it well. I’m completely alone in this world, too.”

The prince was studying her face closely, though the more intense his examination became the sadder he looked. He sighed.

“Thank you,” he said, and he meant it. “And I’m sorry about the lifeboat.”

Since the night the rebels stormed the palace, his advisors and friends assured him that they would right this wrong, and he had nodded and agreed with them. But none of their words had comforted him quite so much as Xiaohe’s empathy. As awful as this situation was, Yixing admitted that he was glad that she was here with him. Looking at her now, he was almost embarrassed that he hadn’t seen through her disguise earlier. In spite of her masculine clothes, her inelegant way of moving, her unevenly cropped hair, and the bloody scar marring her cheek, she was unmistakably — though not typically — feminine. 

“The Blue Parrot?” he said. “You must be from Ash Town, then. I’ve been there.”

Xiaohe laughed weakly.

“I’m sure you have.”

Yixing’s attention fell on the oracle bones once again. His eyes ran along the jagged cracks in the plastrons. He thought about destiny, and he felt disgusted. Destiny was toying with him. Destiny had killed his family, shipwrecked his friends, and stranded him on an island. He looked at his palm suddenly. 

And yet, he could still feel it, the sharp threads of destiny wound around his heart, and tugging. He closed his fist and then looked out at the horizon, remembering the Diviner’s last words.

 _You need to make the journey_.

Something planted itself in his spirit like a great sycamore striking its roots and then shooting upward toward heaven. The air felt different around them as he picked up the bones and looked at the cracks again. 

“Do you believe in the old ways?” Yixing suddenly asked, his voice low. “You know, things like oracle bones, the old gods and goddesses, palmistry, astrology?” 

Xiaohe held her breath. “I don’t believe that it’s wrong to want some guidance in this life,” she answered after thinking awhile. “Heaven knows we could use some right now.”

Yixing smiled in spite of everything.

“I never used to believe in those things. Gods, goddesses, fate, destiny,” he said. “I just tolerated them because they were so deeply ingrained in our society, but I personally didn’t believe it. Maybe because I resented what I thought my destiny was: to grow up, take over my father’s kingdom, become a horrible king like he was. Corrupt, greedy, bloodthirsty. But perhaps that wasn’t it all. Maybe this is an opportunity.”

Xiaohe creased her brows.

“An opportunity to do what?”

Yixing looked at her. His eyes were still sad, but in them she saw something new. A spark of determination. He tightened his grip on the package of bones. He had always been a stubborn one. 

“To make destiny work out in my favor,” he said. He was being cryptic, and Xiaohe blinked in confusion. 

“Listen,” Yixing said, looking at her. “You swore the Oath of the White Lion before getting on the boat, didn’t you?” he asked. Xiaohe looked at his expression and then nodded.

“Yes, Your Highness,” she said softly, unconsciously touching the scar the captain had given her. 

Truthfully, she had forgotten that she had sworn it. The captain had grabbed her by the clothes and forced her to swear to be loyal to the prince, to protect him to her death. It was an oath sworn under duress, but an oath nonetheless. For a poor street urchin and small-time petty thief like Xiaohe, things like oaths never meant much. It only dawned on her now just how grave of an oath she had sworn. 

The heir to the throne, placed in her charge. So much had happened. As he looked at her, she saw that the tears had dried up, and his eyes were still red but no longer swollen. It was hard to look at the bedraggled young man and imagine him dressed in finery, lounging in the harems of the palace. Xiaohe had to continuously remind herself that she was in the presence of royalty.

“Tomorrow, let’s make a plan,” Yixing said. “To get off this island. And then I need you to help me.”

“Help you with what?” she asked.

“Find someone who knows what these cracks mean,” Yixing said. He put the plastron back in the pack and then secured the cloth around it. “My family deserves to be remembered for one thousand more years. I’ll make sure of it.”

Xiaohe was baffled by the sudden flood of determination in the prince. But the fiery light of conviction ablaze in his eyes began to spread to her. She could feel the scar on her cheek burning. The words of the oath echoed in her head. _Unto the last drop of blood_. She had flashbacks to that moment, remembering the feeling of the man’s hands on her face.

Most of all, she would never forget the look on Captain Huang's face. Trusting her. Pleading with her to protect Yixing.  _Take care of him_ , he had said to her, his voice soft. Like a father handing over his son, a jeweler handing over a delicate pearl necklace, a potter parting with his most treasured masterpiece. No one had _ever_ placed that much faith in her. No one had _ever_ trusted her as much as Captain Huang did in that moment. Even more powerful than the oath was that captain's faith in her. Xiaohe didn't want to disappoint the one person who trusted her enough to make her the guardian of the kingdom's last hope. This task set in front of her now might be the most important she would ever undertake. Then, suddenly, she realized something.

 _This was it_ : her escape. 

Her escape from the life of Han Xiaohe, the street-rat whore’s daughter and her transformation into Han Xiaohe: Palace Guard, Warrior of the Order of the White Lion, Protector of the Last Prince. She met Yixing's gaze. Things like honor and oaths never meant much for a former thief like Xiaohe.

Suddenly, they meant everything. 


	9. Red Flag

The stick broke. Yixing cursed, staring shamefully at his work. Three days had passed since he first washed upon the shores of this distant island. Although their fire had gone out several times before, this was the first time that Xiaohe was not around to rebuild it. The prince got down to his knees, grabbed another stick of wood and tried again. It was imperative that they keep the fire burning if they had any plans of rescue. 

Unlike the two days before, today was sunny and clear. Xiaohe had returned to the Southern tip of the island, where the tide pools were, to see if she could gathered some sea urchins and abalones from them to eat. Yixing was in charge of watching the horizon and watching the fire. 

“C’mon, c’mon,” he whispered, pleading to the piece of soft bark and to the twig he was rubbing against it. 

He threw the stick aside and huffed his breath. Starting fires was not something he was taught at the palace. He learned things like the Classics, political theory, and ethics, not survival tactics. He had seen people start fires before, but he himself never had reason to learn. There were servants in the palace whose job was to start and stoke fires throughout the residence. He had never given thought to the act before. Maybe he simply assumed that the fires had begun on their own. But now, as he was stupidly scraping a stick against a piece of bark, he felt pathetic and useless. 

Twice, Xiaohe has had to save him from a snake. Once, she had to stop him from eating a poisonous plant, and another time, she had to chase away a seagull that had started chasing him for no reason. Yixing looked down at the ashy fire pit — the embers were glowing, teasing him. Wasn’t there anything he could contribute to their survival?

His old stubbornness began to take hold again. He grabbed the stick once more, positioned it on the soft bark. This time, he held the stick between his palms and began to twist the nub of the stick against the soft bark. He had kindling nearby, ready to catch the spark. Yixing pressed his lips tightly together as he continued spinning, spinning, spinning until—

At last! A spark ignited on the bark, and just as it began to catch fire, Yixing threw the dry leaves and moss over it. Then, just as he had seen Xiaohe do, he cupped his hands around his mouth, bent over, and blew into the fire. 

A puff of thick smoke rose up from the pile, and Yixing took this as a sign that it was working. Just for good measure, he heaved in a breath and blew even harder into the pile of moss and leaves. But rather than stoking the fire, his breath blew up the pile of ash and soot in the fire pit, which scattered and landed in her eyes, nose, and mouth.

He jerked away from the  cloud of ash and smoke, coughed and scrambled for fresh air. 

“Damn it!” he shouted, seeing as his second attempt to start a fire had failed yet again, and he probably managed to lodge a handful of ash in his lungs, too. He coughed again, fanning the cloud of ash with his hands. He covered his eyes with his sleeve, trying to air out the smoke and soot. But when everything cleared, that was when his eyes landed on the horizon and he spotted it.

A ship. 

He blinked again and again. The vision did not disappear. It wasn’t an hallucination. It was really there. A ship. Yixing’s eyes widened and his heart stopped.

“Xiao… Xiaohe?” he started muttering. He stood up, eyes still locked on the tiny ship in the distance. At last. Salvation. 

“ _Xiaohe_!” he began to shout. Yixing shot up to his feet and booked it across the sand, heading for the tidal pools. “ _Xiaohe_! There’s a ship! A _ship_! There’s a ship on the horizon! Hurry!”

His boots kicked up sand as he ran and his fatigued muscles ached in protest, but Yixing kept running until the tidal pools were in view, and he could see Xiaohe bent over with her hands in the water. 

She spotted the prince running toward her some meters away, but the crashing of the waves was drowning out the sound of his voice. Xiaohe lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the sun as she watched him run toward her. There was a frantic, wild look in his eyes that concerned her. Did he run into another snake? Get chased by another seagull? Disturb a nest of hornets? She stood up.

“What’s wrong?” she shouted. “What’s with you?”

“A _ship_!” he shouted when he was finally close enough. Yixing splashed and disturbed the water as he ran into the tide pools. He grabbed Xiaohe by the wrist and began pulling her.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded again.

“There’s a ship!” Yixing said. “I saw it! It’s over there, it’s going to pass us! The fire’s out! We have to signal it!”

Realization crashed like a wave on Xiaohe as she let herself be pulled along behind the prince. She picked up the pace and they sprinted back to their camping spot. When they rounded the corner of the island, Xiaohe saw it. The ship, it’s red sails a triangular speck on the otherwise empty horizon. And it would be gone soon if they didn’t act fast. 

“Fire!” Xiaohe shouted. “Quick! It’ll pass us!” When they reached the fire pit, Xiaohe got onto her knees, grabbed the soft bark and the stick and hurried began to spin it in her hands. Yixing gathered up the rest of the dry moss and leaves that they had left and pushed it against Xiaohe’s bark and stick to catch the spark. All the while, their panicked eyes kept watch on the passing ship.

“Hurry up!”

“I’m trying!” she replied. Sweat began to collect on her brow. Her palms were rubbed raw and tender, but she still spun the stick. Her life, and that of the prince, depended upon the lighting of this fire. Yixing ran to the coastline and began to wave his arms about.

“ _Hey_!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Over here! Stop!”

“Your Highness, we need more leaves!” Xiaohe said when the kindling finally caught the spark. She pushed the dry moss against it and gently blew into the flame. This time, she was able to coax out more heat, more fire. It began to build up. Yixing tossed more firewood in Xiaohe’s direction and she began feeding it to the flame. 

“It has to be bigger! More smoke!” Yixing said.

“Leaves! Green ones!” Xiaohe said, running to the edge of the forest and pulling up ferns and small plants. She tossed them to Yixing, who fed them to the flames. The smoke grew thicker and darker as the fire grew in size and height. 

“Can they see us?” Xiaohe asked. Yixing turned back to the ocean. The ship was still there, sitting on the horizon. Although it didn’t seem to have moved from its spot, the sails were unmistakably larger now. The ship was coming closer.

“I think they’ve seen us!” Yixing said, feeding more green plants into the flame. The stack of smoke was rising high into the air. Xiaohe ran to the coastline this time and began to wave her arms about.

“ _Over_ _here_!” she shouted, knowing full well that it was still too far for anyone on the ship to see or hear them. Still, Yixing joined her on the sand and did the same. 

“Here!” Yixing shouted. “We’re over here! Hey!”

Xiaohe thought her heart might burst. The thought of rescue had been slipping them as of late. Keeping hope alive had been the most difficult part of surviving these last few nights. When she had caught sight of that ship in the distance, she had been almost delirious with joy. The two continued jumping and shouting there on the beach while their fire blazed hot against their backs. The ship was coming closer, and the prince wanted to cry, in raptures at the thought of escaping this island. For a brief moment, Yixing starts to laugh as he shouts at the ship that is coming for them. 

“They’re coming here!” Xiaohe said, smiling. “They’ve seen us, they’re coming now!”

“We’re getting off this island,” Yixing said. “They’ve seen us, we’re going to be rescued!”

“Yes! Heaven’s shown us some favor, Your Highness,” Xiaohe said. She turned and began to feed more wood into the fire, to keep it going. The two continued to feed the flames until they had no more wood to burn. Xiaohe collected the sword and the discarded cloth that used to bind her chest, gathering her few belongings and readying herself to leave the island. Yixing grabbed the pack of oracle bones, arranging the cloth so that he could wear the pack on his back. 

But after twenty or so minutes, Yixing felt that something was not quite right. The ship was still coming toward them, and they were moving fast. 

When the ship came close enough, he realized what was wrong: the flag tied to the tallest mast of the ship was blood-red, and there was a golden bird embroidered into the cloth. His face paled. He had seen the ship before, had heard many a naval officer describe it, had heard tales of it. And it was heading straight for them. 

“Xiaohe,” he muttered, backing away.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, noting the look of fear on his face.

“This isn’t right,” he said gravely. “That flag. That ship.”

“What?” she said, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s a pirate ship,” Yixing said, backing further away from the coastline. “There’s a red flag with a golden bird on it, it’s the Phoenix Flag!”

“What?” 

Yixing spun around, ran to their fire pit and bean to stamp out the flames.

“What are you doing?” Xiaohe asked, but Yixing grabbed her by the wrist again and began dragging her toward the forest. 

“Run!” he said. Xiaohe barely had time to grab the sword before Yixing grabbed her and ducked into the thick foliage. The beach disappeared from sight, but not before Xiaohe could turn and get a final look at the ship that was approaching their island. 

Once inside the forest, Yixing let go of Xiaohe’s hand and began to frantically look around. They were aware of just how small the island was. It was also relatively flat with very little places to hide or run. Xiaohe tightened her grip on the sword just as Yixing turned to her. His eyes were shaking in their sockets, panic awash all over his features.

“What do we do?” Xiaohe asked, trying hard to keep her head on straight. 

Yixing whipped his head left and right, seeing nowhere to go or hide. 

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.” He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, trying to come up with a plan. Xiaohe began to look around and do the same.

The pirates of the Phoenix Flag were an infamous crew of bandits, miscreants, and murderers. Nothing good could come of being captured, and Yixing and Xiaohe had led them right to their island. 

“We can’t stop now,” Xiaohe said. “We have to go deeper!”

They ran further into the forest, dodging between trees and jumping over roots and stones. 

“Whatever happens,” Yixing said, when they stopped again. “We can’t reveal out identities! If they knew I was the prince, they could ransom me back to the rebels. And _you_ have to be a boy again, to protect yourself!”

Xiaohe nodded frantically. She grabbed the cloth and tried to bind her chest again, as well as she could without lifting her shirt too much. Yixing grabbed fistfuls of dirt from the forest floor and rubbed it against his face, hoping to disguise his features beyond recognition. As he reached for another handful of dirt, he noticed the golden glint on his finger.

“The ring!” Xiaohe said. “You have to hide it.”

Yixing nodded as he took it off. 

“Here, give it here,” Xiaohe said, stretching her hand out. “They can’t find it with you. I’ll keep it safe.”

Yixing didn’t even hesitate when he handed it over. Xiaohe slipped it into the side of her boot, where it fell down to the bottom and rested below the arch of her right foot. Yixing began to eye the sword.

“Do you know how to use that thing?” he asked. Xiaohe looked down at the weapon and then at the prince.

“To be honest, not really,” she said. “He just gave it to me, I don’t—,”

“Here, give it to me,” Yixing said. “I have some training with swords.”

Xiaohe was only a little bit reluctant as she handed the broadsword over to the prince. Yixing took it, and he unsheathed the weapon just to make sure of it. Despite the haggard appearances of the two survivors, the cold steel of the captain’s broadsword was nearly spotless. Yixing wrapped the red sash around his hand and gripped the handle tightly. Through the parting of the trees, Xiaohe could just about make out the outline of the ship, resting just beyond the waves. The red phoenix flag flailed in the wind. Men were filing into a boat that would be lowered to the water and would then bring them ashore. Yixing took a deep breath, and Xiaohe clenched her jaw. Only three days after the ordeal with the _Chimera_ and the _Relentless_ , it was again time to fight for their lives. 

This time, they were ready.

 


	10. A Pair of White Lion Guards

The captain of _The Phoenix_ stood on the bow of the ship, looking through a spyglass at the distant shore, where two island-dwellers had disappeared into the forest. Captain Lau lowered the scope and clenched his jaw. 

“Luhan!” he shouted, and the First Officer appeared at the captain’s side, cowering as he held onto the map.

“Aye, sir?” he said softly. The captain turned and grabbed the boy by the clothes, shoving the spyglass into the boy’s hands and forcing him to drop the map.

“Look there, boy!” the captain shoved Luhan against the rails of the ship. He fumbled with the spyglass, lifting it shakily to his eye. “What see you there?”

Luhan looked through the glass at the shore. “Um… a camp site, sir.”

The captain picked up the map that fell and pushed it at the First Officer. “Perhaps you’d like to explain how those two found our island?” Captain Lau demanded. 

“I don’t know, sir, they must have found it by accident,” Luhan answered, looking down at the map. “I studied every map I could find, this one wasn’t on any of them—,”

The captain pulled his sword from its sheath and Luhan jumped back on instinct. He was grabbed by the collar once more, and the captain shoved the hilt of his sword against his chest. 

“If any of the plunder has been stolen,” Captain Lau threatened. “It is coming out of your share. Assemble a team to check on the bunker. And bring me those two.”

When the captain let go of the First Officer, Luhan stumbled backwards and fell on his bottom. When he looked around himself, the rest of the crew bore witness to the humiliating situation. He grit his teeth together as he stood up and brushed himself off. 

“What are you all gawking at? _What are you all gawking at_?” he shouted, spit flying out his mouth. “The security of our bunker has been compromised, and you all stand and stare? You think you’re at the opera, now?”

Luhan started grabbing at random crew members, pulling them into the middle of the circle they had formed around him. 

“You!” he said, pointing. “You, and you! With me, we’re going ashore!”

“Where are the new boys?” Captain Lau shouted from the bow, and the crew looked up at the man. Out of the crowd of twenty or thirty men, two boys emerged. One short and one tall, both carrying mops. 

“Here, sir!” they shouted in unison before casting each other a dirty look. Captain Lau sized them up. After two of their deckhands fell behind on their last plunder, he had no choice but to pick up some fresh meat. He jerked his head in Luhan’s direction.

“Take them with you,” Captain Lau said. Luhan gave a curt nod before grabbing the new boys by the backs of their shirts. The rest of the men shoved a sword into Tao’s hands and a pistol into Kyungsoo’s. Then, they were shoved into the boat and lowered into the water. The two deckhands looked at each other, trying to hide the looks of excitement on their faces with expressions of murderous intent worthy of pirates of the Phoenix Flag. 

 

—

 

When the boat touched down on shore, Yixing and Xiaohe tried to run further into the forest. But they realized they couldn’t run any further without popping up on the other side of the more-or-less round island. They wandered around in the thick shrubbery before Xiaohe formulated an idea.

“Your Highness!” she shouted, lifting a foot onto a raised tree branch. “Into the trees!” 

“What?” Yixing said, adjusting the pack of bones on his back. When he walked back to where Xiaohe’s voice was coming from, she had already jumped onto a tree branch and pulled herself onto it. He looked up at her, grabbing and climbing, higher and higher into the tree. How she managed to et up there so quickly and so nimbly was beyond him. Yixing scoffed.

“You’re kidding me,” he said. Xiaohe looked down at the prince.

“Hurry up!” she shouted down. “They’re coming! Get up here!”

“Damn it,” Yixing whispered. He tied the sword to his hip. He jumped up and grabbed onto the branch with both hands. He grunted as he tried to raise himself up onto it. Xiaohe clenched her fists, watching the shore and silently begging the prince to climb faster. 

“Hurry, hurry!” she whispered. 

“You think this is easy?” Yixing said, just managing to get his leg over. But just as he was able to shift his weight onto the tree branch, he felt the load on his back lighten. The cloth had come undone at the bottom, a single turtle plastron had slipped out and fallen to the ground. 

His focus lost, Yixing didn’t hear the crackle of the branch. A second later, it snapped, and Yixing had his weight pulled out from underneath him. He hit the dirt ground hard, his lungs clearing of air upon impact. His stomach had fallen on the sword handle, and a hiss of pain escaped his mouth involuntarily. 

“ _Damn_!” Xiaohe cursed, seeing him fall back to the ground. Without the branch, there was no way he could climb back up. He had just managed to get himself off the ground when he heard the crunching of leaves and twigs underfoot.

“Here! Here they are!” said a voice. In the gaps between the trees, there emerged three men with swords. Sprinting toward him. Yixing shot up to his feet. He looked up at Xiaohe in the trees, made eye contact for just a split second before deciding that he had to lead them away from her. The pirates were just a few paces away now. He took the sword from its sheath and bolted in the other direction.

“Your Highness!” Xiaohe whispered before slapping a hand over her mouth. Down below, she watched as Yixing disappeared and three men with swords chased after him. Xiaohe didn’t know what to do, but she began to climb down. She needed a very thick branch or a sharp stone, something she could use to defend herself and help Yixing. But as she made her way down the tree, she heard voices.

“This is _my_ pistol! First Officer handed it to _me_ , not you!” 

Two men emerged. One short and one tall. Xiaohe ducked behind the trunk, balancing herself on two forked branched. Below her, two pirates argued. Both had weapons.

“But you know that sword isn’t my strong point!” Tao shouted at Kyungsoo. “Take it! Come on, let’s trade!”

“There is no trading!” Kyungsoo yelled. “Will you go through life with this mentality, thinking you can just trade in bad stuff for good stuff? In life, we get stuck with things we don’t want!”

“How am I supposed to impress the captain if I’m stuck with a weapon I can’t use?”

“Not my problem!”

“ _Gimme that pistol_!” Tao suddenly jumped on the shorter boy and tried to grab the weapon from his hands, dropping the sword to the ground. Xiaohe eyed the discarded sword. Without thinking, she jumped from her lofty perch and onto the two squabbling pirates. Tao let out a high pitched scream while Kyungsoo spewed out a litany of curses. Kyungsoo dropped the pistol. Xiaohe jumped at the opportunity and made a mad dash to grab the sword since it was closer. Her hand was just a few inches away from grabbing the handle before she felt a violent tug at her leg. One of the pirates had grabbed her boot and begun pulling her away.

“I got him! I got him!” Tao shouted. A smile spread across his face as she dragged Xiaohe along the forest floor, stomach facing down. 

“No!” Xiaohe shouted, the sword suddenly out of reach. She tried to turn and kick at her captor, but to no avail. She reached out and grabbed onto a tree branch. Tao fell backward at the sudden halt, and as he did, he took the boot with him on the way down. Kyungsoo saw a bit of gold flying out of it. Xiaohe tried to push herself off the ground, but the tall one had recovered and was grabbing at her again. 

“I got him, Kyungsoo!” Tao shouted. He had grabbed her by the front of her clothes and was about to lift her off the ground when Xiaohe began grasping for something, anything she could get her hands. When he fingers closed around something slim and scaly, she lifted it up to man’s face.

“Snake!” Tao shouted, dropping her to the ground again. Xiaohe threw the snake at the man’s direction. When she turned to make a dash for the sword again, she came face-to-face with the other pirate, the short one.

Kyungsoo pointed the pistol at her face, and Xiaohe’s widened her eyes. Kyungsoo stared down the barrel at the boy and smirked in the most pirate-way he could manage. 

“Say goodbye,” he said. Xiaohe sucked in a breath, and Kyungsoo pulled the trigger.

 _Click_. Nothing happened. Xiaohe opened her eyes and witnessed the blood running from the shorter pirate’s eyes. 

“Oh shit, I forgot to load it,” Kyungsoo said, drawing the gun back. Taking this chance, Xiaohe shot her fist into his face. Pain exploded across her knuckles and she tried to shake it away. But as the shorter pirate fell back, the taller one jumped and grabbed her from behind. Tao put his arms around her and held onto his wrist to keep her from grabbing onto the pistol or the sword. 

“Kyungsoo! It’s fine, I got him!”

“God, that hurt!” Kyungsoo whined. Xiaohe lifted her hands up and tried to grab onto the taller pirate’s face, but Tao jerked his head out of her grasp.

“Let me go!” Xiaohe shouted. She dropped her wight to the ground. Tao lost his grip on her. She backed out underneath Tao’s legs and grabbed the sword. Before the taller pirate could even turn around, Xiaohe had knocked his legs out from underneath him. She got up, sword raised high and stood over him. Tao whines beneath her. Xiaohe realizes that she could kill this man with one strike if she wanted to, and the power to do so makes her suddenly afraid. 

But before she can even come to a decision, she hears another click and feels the shorter man pushing the barrel of the gun into her back.

“It’s loaded this time.”

Xiaohe was helpless when the taller one stood and wrestled the sword from her grip. She turned slowly to face the shorter pirate again, who now had the beginnings of a black eye. The gun was still pointed at her.

“Ooh, look at this,” said the taller one. When Xiaohe turned her head to look, she saw the taller pirate with Yixing’s ring in his palm. 

 

—

 

Yixing kept running. He had left the forest and the men were chasing him across the beach now. Soon, the fastest of the three would catch up to him, and he would have to fight. Behind him, Luhan and two other pirates were still in hot pursuit. His breathing was starting to sting his throat, and his leg muscles flamed in protest. Normally, the prince had satisfactory stamina for running, but after three days with minimal food and water, he was weaker than usual.

“After him!” the First Officer shouted, and in response, the two men sped up. Yixing saw the thin stack of smoke from the fire that was dying out. He had ran a full circle around the island now. One of the pirates was catching up to him. Yixing ran past the dying fire and kicked up the still-hot embers into the man’s face. He fell to his knees, and the pirate behind him overtook him and continued running after the prince. 

When the fastest of the bunch finally caught up to him, Yixing spun around, stood his ground and lifted the captain’s broadsword. When the pirate swung down and steel met steel, Yixing felt this whole body rocked by the impact. At the first blow, Yixing fell back and had to dodge the man’s swings. He summoned to his brain the years of sword training he received at the palace. He had sparred before, but none of his opponents had ever seriously meant to kill him. Yixing parried the pirate’s blows. He had to put an end to fight quickly, before the other caught up to him. When the man swung at his head again, Yixing ducked and then moved to the side. Seeing an opening, Yixing swung, just managing to cut the skin above the man’s wrist. Blood spewed out, along with a pain scream. Yixing took this chance to turn and run again. 

Yixing was back in the forest. In time, the second-fastest man caught up. Yixing turned to fight him. Again, he could feel his weakened body rocked by every blow. He had never been much good at the broadsword, and had to rely mainly on his reflexes to dodge what could have been a fatal blow with every swing. But when the man swung and got the blade of his sword stuck in the bark of a tree, Yixing kicked the man away. With his hand still on the handle of his weak sword, the blade bent and broke. 

The prince smiled at his work and for a brief moment his confidence grew. But when he turned to run again, he found himself face-to-face with the First Officer. Luhan left the man no time to recover before he leaped into action. Yixing jumped back to evade the first swing, but the tip of the pirate’s blade sliced the first clasp of the uniform shirt that he wore and the knot that tied to the oracles to his back. The pack fell to the ground, the bones scattered. His heart rate sped up. This pirate was the most skilled of the three that had come after him. Yixing felt him shoved and pushed back with every blow. After going all out with the previous two, he hadn’t  much energy left to fight this last one. But when the pirate got his foot caught on a raised tree branch, Yixing saw his opportunity. He advanced forward. The roles switched with Yixing on the offensive and the First Officer defending. But just as things were about evenly matched, they both heard rustling in the bushes.

When Yixing happened to turn around, he spotted Xiaohe, scowling and struggling against two captors. Her hands were bound behind her back, and there were two men with her. The tall one was holding her back while the shorter one pointed a pistol at her head.

“Hey look, boss, we got one!” the tall one shouted. Yixing froze, and as he did, Luhan kicked the sword out of his hands and forced him to his knees. The pack of oracle bones was pulled The First Officer planted his knee on Yixing’s back as he was pushed to the ground and had his hands bound.

“How did you find this island?” he shouted. “How?”

“I don’t know!” Yixing struggled to speak. “Our ship was wrecked, we just floated here on the boat!” 

The two others caught up to the group. Yixing was pulled of the ground, his hands bound. He looked at the pile of bones scattered in the sand and inwardly panicked. 

“Give him here,” said one of the other pirates, signaling for Tao to push Xiaohe toward them. Tao did as he was told and handed his prisoner off to the other man, but not before Xiaohe could kick him in the shin. 

Luhan stared the captives through narrow eyes. Then, he motioned for the group to follow him back into the forest. Yixing and Xiaohe both had their hands bound and were escorted by the two other pirates. They were pushed and shoved along, their arms held onto tightly. When they arrived in the center of the forest, the First Officer knelt down and began to paw at the ground. Yixing and Xiaohe stood silently as they watched him grab onto a handle and lift up, revealing a trap door. 

When they looked down inside, they saw a bunker filled with items stolen from passing merchant ships. Things like silks, parasols, tea leaves, rice wine, and spices. Ceramics, furs, porcelain, lacquer ware, and jade. Iron, bronze, lapis lazuli, and rosewood furniture. Swords, handheld pistols, cigars, opium, cotton, and animal skins. Tapestries, carpets, medicinal herbs, and perfume. Coral, amber, ivory, and some food items such as dried meats, persimmons, coconuts, figs, onions, cinnamon, ginger, honey. A pirate's treasure trove. To think they had starved for three days while all these things were hidden just some meters away and underneath them. 

“Everything looks to be in place,” Luhan said, letting the door slam shut again. He turned his attention back to their captives. 

“What have we here, then?” he said, walking closer to them. Yixing averted his eyes while Xiaohe stared him down. Luhan looked amused, examining the hostages.

“Well, well,” he said, looking them up and down, taking in the green shirt and black trousers, the red sash on the sword.

“A pair of White Lion guards, this is a lucky day. This one swings the swords and wears the uniform,” Luhan said, pointing his blade at Yixing’s chin. Then, he moved over to Xiaohe, who was still giving him a death glare. 

“This one stares at people and wears the scar,” the tip of his blade lightly touched the scar on Xiaohe’s cheek, which had opened up and started bleeding anew. 

“I caught that one,” Tao said. Kyungsoo elbowed him in the rib cage. 

"Shut up," Luhan said.

 


	11. The Last Prince

“Wah, it’s so pretty!” Tao said, holding the ring up to a sliver of sunlight that fell through the cracks in the deck. Yixing looked through the bars of the brig prison cell he’d been thrown into along with Xiaohe. The pirate holding his ring didn’t seem to register that it was a symbol of royalty yet, and he was praying it would stay that way for a while.

Kyungsoo struck Tao’s backside with the wet side of a mop. “Put that thing down and help me swab, you insect,” he threatened. Tao kept his eyes on the tiny gold object, admiring it with sparkling eyes. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever owned anything so beautiful,” Tao said, turning the ring so that the gold glinted in the light. “Look, Kyungsoo! It’s sparkling!”

“You poor soul,” Kyungsoo said. “Have you really never seen a gold ring in your life?”

Tao gave a high pitched yelp as he turned the ring and looked at the flat bezel. “Yah, what is this!” he whined. “It has these two scary monsters on it!” 

“They’re not monsters! They’re obviously two guys in masks!”

While they bickered, Yixing watched his ring closely. Beside him, Xiaohe, resourceful as always, was already examining their new environment, trying to formulate some kind of escape plan. After being captured by the team of pirates, they were brought back to the ship and thrown into the brig together. The pirates had confiscated Yixing’s oracle bones and Xiaohe’s sword. The tall pirate still had Yixing’s ring. 

Xiaohe’s shoulder bumped him again. It couldn’t be helped. The cell they’d been thrown into was only big enough for one person to sit or for two people to stand. If they were going to escape, they would have to do it soon. Xiaohe couldn’t imagine having to spend an extended period of time trapped in such a cramped space. Through a crack in the hull, the captives saw the island growing smaller as the ship pulled further into the sea.

 

—

 

Above the deck, the captain was standing at a table at the _Phoenix’_ s stern. Behind him, a crew member had been tasked with navigating the rudder while the Sailing Master stood at the helm. From the raised quarter deck, Lau had a full, uninterrupted view of the ship and the surrounding waters. As peaceful as a scene it was, something about it was also saddening. But he took his mind off such matters and hardened his look as the First Officer approached. Luhan said something to the Sailing Master before approaching Lau at the table. 

“You’re sure nothing was taken then,” Lau asked the First Officer as he studied a map of trade routes. Luhan nodded firmly.

“Yes, sir,” he answered. 

Lau placed a finger on one of the routes and traced it across the blue page. A heavy conch shell weighted down a corner of the map while the rough sea winds tried hard to carry it away. The captain creased his brows, trying to decide which route they would sail today, and how they would get the element of surprise on their next raid.

“Who were they, then? The prisoners,” Lau asked without looking up. 

“A couple of Palace Guards, sir,” Luhan answered. “Either shipwrecked or deserters. Either way, they weren’t a problem.”

Lau smirked as he turned and looked at his First Officer. “Not that we shy away from challenges, do we, First Officer? And the new boys? How’d they do? Are we keeping them, or should we begin searching for another island to maroon them on?”

“Irritating, as usual,” Luhan answered. “But they _are_ useful. I’d say we can get at least another six months until they start getting on anyone’s nerves.”

“Hmm,” Lau said. The pair remained silent while somewhere else on deck, the Quarter Master was shouting insults and instructions at the crew. It was just past high noon, and with a good wind in their sails, it was becoming difficult to invent new jobs to preoccupy the crew. Luhan stepped forward and brought out a pack wrapped in a gray cloth.

“One of them was carrying this,” Luhan said, gingerly laying the pack on the corner of the table. Lau looked at it from the corner of his eye. Then the captain produced a curved dagger from his side and used the blade to undo the knot. Inside, he found the flat, cracked turtle bones. There was an amused look on the captain’s face that Luhan couldn’t read.

“How interesting,” Lau said, picking one up and turning it in his hand.

“Poachers, then?” Luhan asked. “These are turtle plastrons, perhaps they survived off the meat and then kept the bones.”

Lau scoffed. He turned the plastrons over again, his eyes poring over the tiny cracks. Luhan still couldn’t understand the look on the man’s face.

“Captain?” Luhan called out. Lau looked sideways at the First Officer. He put the plastron down and picked up another.

“Curious,” Lau said. “Do you believe in the old ways, First Officer?”

“The old ways, sir?”

Lau didn’t reply for a long time. The captain dropped the plastron back onto the table and turned his hand over so that it faced upward. The lines on his palm were as deep and pronounced as the cracks on the bones. It had been a very long time since he last felt the pull of Fate. 

“Captain,” said the man at the rudder. Lau turned to face his crewman, and that was when he noticed the white sails. 

“An Imperial ship!” Luhan said, swiping the spyglass from the table and looking through it. “Captain, your orders?”

But instead of shouting at the men to assume their battle stations, Lau laughed. A bundle of oracle bones on his navigation table, and not five minutes later, white sails on the horizon. The gods had gotten much faster in their dealings with the human world. He wrapped his hand around the hilt of his curved dagger and held on tightly. 

“Battle stations,” Lau said. “But wait for my order.”

Luhan relayed the orders to the Quarter Master, who began bellowing out orders. The men scrambled to their positions, grabbing swords and pistols. Other fled down to the gunning bay to prepare the cannons.

Down in the brig, the commotion startled the trapped guests. The two pirates keeping watch left Yixing and Xiaohe alone in the brig to rush to the gunning deck. 

“What’s happening?” Xiaohe asked, pressing herself against the bars of the cell.

“I don’t know,” Yixing answered. They both strained their eyes and neck to get a better view of what was happening above their heads. All they could hear were heavy footsteps, the sounds of cannons on wheels rolling across the pine wood. People were shouting, they could hear guns being loaded and swords being brandished. Yixing realized that they were all rushing to their battle stations. He turned and looked at Xiaohe who had come to the same realization.

Xiaohe had been afraid before. Back on the _Chimera_ , when their ship was tossed by the storm and the rebels boarded. Back on the island when their hope of rescue slipped away with every sunset and sunrise. But now, standing behind bars on a pirate vessel under attack, she was beginning to feel honestly afraid. Her thoughts were interrupted when the prince suddenly shoved her backwards.

“Ouch!” Xiaohe slapped his shoulder, instinctively. “What are you doing?”

“Sorry,” Yixing said, backing up as Xiaohe got out of his way. “I need a little space.”

“There is nowhere for me to move,” Xiaohe said.

“Just stand back a little,” Yixing said. Before Xiaohe could protest again, Yixing leaned back and kicked at the bars. Xiaohe’s hands flew up to cover her ears as a loud crashing noise rang through the deck. But the bars never gave away. Yixing tried again and again. Still nothing. He paused for a minute, waited for the commotion on deck to start up again, and then kicked some more. Still nothing. 

“Hey!” said the tall pirate from before, who was descending into the brig. “Stop that!” he had pulled out a pistol and was advancing towards them with the muzzle pointed at Yixing’s head. The prince backed away. But when the pirate came closer to them, Xiaohe saw an opportunity.

“Quit that racket, or I’ll shoot you right now!” he shouted.

Xiaohe shoved Yixing aside then stuck her arm through the bars, grabbed the pirate by the collar, and then pulled him toward the cage. He couldn’t pull the trigger in time before his head made solid contact with the cage and he fell to the floor. The gun made a clatter when it landed on the floor, just on the opposite side of the room. 

Immediately, Xiaohe dropped to the floor, stuck her arm through the holes once more and tried to grab it. 

“Can you reach it?” Yixing asked.

It was out of grasp. 

“No,” Xiaohe said, groaning. “You try it, your arms are longer than mine.”

“Alright, let me try,” Yixing said. Xiaohe stood and let the prince take her place. 

 

—

 

The _Phoenix_ was not a heavily armed ship. When they faced trouble, they preferred to rely on speed and cleverness to outwit their enemies or outrun them. Confrontations were not the pirates’ favorite mode of problem-solving, but that was not to say that they were not ready to fight if the need ever arose. 

When the men were at their battle stations, the Imperial ship was coming closer. Lau stowed away the table and hid the pack of bones I his cabin. Then the captain grabbed his sword and took his place at the Quarter Deck beside the First Officer and the Sailing Master. On the main deck, the Quarter Master took his place with the rest of the crew. The ship was coming up on the starboard side. 

Lau had planned to give the order straight away, but when he saw who was on the ship, he lost his words. Across the gap of water, standing on the deck of the _Relentless_ stood a woman that he had not seen but thought of constantly for years. The leader of the People’s Army spotted Lau on the Quarter Deck and she grinned. Beside her, her crew was also poised in their battle positions. She gave no order. Lau pushed Luhan aside and climbed down to the main deck.

“Cheng Shu,” he said.

There was silence between the two crew, seeing that their captains recognized each other. Cheng Shu shielded her eyes as she looked across at the captain of the _Phoenix_.

“Lau? Is that you?” she smiled haughtily. “How long has it been?”

Lau clenched his fist around his sword. He knew exactly how long it had been.

“Eighteen years, three months, and twenty-two days,” he said. The woman laughed, the thick silk of her red robes whipped about her form as the wind blew. 

“What an astounding memory you have,” she answered.

“I never forget a member of my crew,” lau answered. “Not even the betrayers.”

“Look how far you’ve come. Captain of the _Phoenix_ ,” she said. “But would you call that a lateral career move?”

“I call it dealing with the consequences,” Lau said, smirking. The skin on his face was burning up, but he was trying hard not to let his emotions get the better of him. 

“But look what has happened to you,” he said. “Sailing under Imperial colors. Or false colors, I should say. A stolen ship.”

Cheng Shu frowned. She raised her sword and gestured to the vessel. 

“It’s my ship now,” the rebel leader said, her voice dipping low. “It was built for the Emperor, but now that I am Chancellor, the ship belongs to me and to the People.”

Lau shook his head, remembering that this was the sort of thing that had gotten him here in the first place.

“So I see you are still in the business of overthrowing leadership,” he said.

“I find it is a more lucrative business to be in than piracy.”

“You must be careful, then, Cheng,” Lau said slowly. “Those who live by the sword die by it. But how is it we are meeting now? What brings you?”

“An excellent question,” she said, lowering her sword. Behind her, the crew fidgeted, eager to fire their guns. 

“One that many lead to an even better one after you hear my reasoning,” she said. “I’ve never believed much in the old ways, but our astrologer tells us that the key to the success of our new regime lies hidden in cracks of bone.”

“So you are chasing down myths and legends now, then,” Lau said.

“For generations, Zhang has imprisoned the people with power derived from the divine,” Cheng said. “We aim to use that same power to strengthen the People’s Army. But now here is my proposal.”

Lau narrowed his eyes at his former First Officer. “What say you to joining us on this endeavor? You have quite a robust ship and crew here, you could be useful to us. How about it, Lau? Shall we be partners again? Just like the good old days? You were a very good partner to me back then.”

Lau clenched his jaw, remembering the so-called “old days”. The betrayal and the heartbreak, the regret. He let out a slow breath and spoke with a low, growling voice.

“You… destroyed my life,” he said. Cheng Shu only smirked as she gave the order for the anchor to be hoisted. Slowly, the _Relentless_ began to sail again. 

“I take that as a ‘no,’ then?” 

Just as the _Phoenix_ crew thought that the rebels would leave without a single bullet fire, one man lit a cannon and they watch sit rip through the _Phoenix_ ’s hull. The cannon ball went straight into the starboard side of the ship. Down below, as the cannon crashed through the wood and rocked the boat, Xiaohe lost her balance and fell onto Yixing. Before either could register what was happening, the ship was pummeled by another round of cannon fire as the _Relentless_ sailed past. Yixing rolled over and covered Xiaohe as they waited for it to be over.

Above them, Luhan ran straight to the captain, but he stood as still as an oak there on the main deck, watching his rival sail away.

“Captain!” Luhan shouted. “Do you give the order to pursue?”

Lau turned to his First Officer slowly. There was a grimace on his face, the look on his eyes was simultaneously livid and sad. He shook his head slowly.

“No,” Lau said. The men began to complain, shouting insults to the captain and his Officers, hungry for vengeance. But still, Lau stood there and did nothing. As the white sails of the _Relentless_ faded into the distance, his heart beat as steadily and intensely as war drums. There would be a time for vengeance. But victory belongs to those patient enough to wait for it. 

 

—

 

When the cannon fire subsided and things quieted down, Yixing eased himself off of Xiaohe and looked down at her. In the terror and heat of the moment, he hadn’t paid attention to how he had positioned himself. He was only concerned about their safety when he dropped to the floor and covered her. But when he looked down at Xiaohe, he was caught off-guard by how close he was to her face. He lifted himself off the floor and let Xiaohe sit up.

“Are you alright?” he asked, catching his breath. 

“I’m fine,” Xiaohe said. She looked around the room. She was still feeling a little unsettled by everything that had happened. But she had enough of herself to be annoyed that of all the things that could have been broken by cannon ball, their cell was not one of those things. Yixing stood on shaky legs and looked through the hole made by a cannon ball in the side of the ship. Through it, he could see the ocean and the sun beginning its descent in the sky. But just as Xiaohe was beginning to stand, they heard footsteps coming toward them. 

In the doorway appeared the First Officer, the shorter pirate, and two others. Without a word, they were taken from their cell, one pirate each holding onto their arms. They were shoved up the stairs and onto the main deck. There, the crew had assembled, with all their weapons still drawn, shouting profanities at the two captives. Yixing cowered against his captor while Xiaohe tried her hardest not to appear shaken. When she looked over at the prince and saw his courage faltering, she wanted to tell him to swallow up his fear. Men like these — dishonorable criminals — feasted on fear. 

But in the next moment, they were forced to kneel down in the center of the ship’s waist. A circle had formed around them. Some of the crew were throwing things at them, shouting insults. But suddenly a man came to stand in front of them. Captain Lau loomed over them, a hand on his sword. He wore blue silk robes, trimmed with gold thread. Luxuries stolen from a trading vessel, no doubt. The black vest he wore over his robes was made of black leather, and it was tied to his person with a blood red sash with a golden bird embroidered into it.

The man bent down and opened up his hand. In the middle of his palm, there was a gold signet ring. Yixing forced himself to keep his face neutral. 

“What a pretty ring this is,” he said. He grabbed Yixing’s chin and forced him to look at it. “Look at that. The seal of the prince of the Twin Demons Empire. How very _special_.”

He let go of Yixing’s chin and then turned away, scanned the horizon before looking at the prisoners again.

“A pair of Lion Cubs on my ship, and the grand possibility that I might be entertaining royalty right now,” he said. A murmur spread through the crowd. Curious gazes and even a few doubtful laughs. Lau watched the prisoners closely. Yixing turned his eyes to the man’s boots while Xiaohe kept her gaze level and defiant. Lau clenched his fists and snarled, annoyed.

“Come, come, one of you must have something to say,” he said. “Cheng Shu comes around here looking for a sack of oracle bones and you two suddenly have a pack of oracle bones. The monarchy has been sacked, my man brings back a ring, there’s at least one more prince alive, isn’t there?”

Neither of them answered. Lau approached them again, and the man holding Yixing kicked him in the back. Xiaohe fought against her captor, but to no avail.

“One of you is the last prince!” Lau shouted into their faces. “ _I_ know it, _you_ know it, so come on, man, _tell me_! Which of you is the Prince of the Twin Demons Empire?”

Xiaohe’s captor began twisting her arm, and the pain was too much, she couldn’t even say a word in protest. Yixing still averted his gaze. Lau was losing patience.

“Tao!” he shouted, and from the crowd, the formerly unconscious pirate stepped forward. Tao looked timid as he approached. 

“Which of them had this ring?” Lau asked. Tao looked surprised at the question. Xiaohe looked at the tall pirate and her heart sank.

“Uh… the little one, sir,” Tao answered. Lau looked back at the prisoners and his eyes zeroed in on Xiaohe. The little one. 

“The little one, then,’ he said, bending down to her. Xiaohe let out a hiss as the man behind her began to twist her arm again. Lau hardened his gaze. “Tell me, little one, is it you? _Speak_!”

But instead of speaking, Xiaohe spat into his face. The crew gasped aloud in unison. When he cleared the saliva, his expression was demonic. He grabbed Xiaohe’s face, lifted her chin and forced her to look into his eyes. 

“ _You worthless piece of filth_!” he said. He shoved Xiaohe back and then stood up, casting a poisonous look at both of the captives. He scoffed. 

“Alright, then,” he said. “If you really are just a pair of nobodies, then I suppose there is no point in keeping you alive. Starting with you, little one.”

Xiaohe’s eyes were still defiant despite the obvious pain she was in. But in the next second, the man holding her pulled her up to stand and began dragging her back. Lau shouted orders again. 

“Quarter Master!” he said, and a stocky man in a maroon shirt stepped forward. “Have his head thrown to the sharks.”

At that, Yixing finally whipped his head back up, In all the commotion, he just had a split second to look back and catch Xiaohe’s eyes before she started screaming. The Quarter Master pulled out an enormous sword while another one of the crew prepared a wooden block. The man holding Xiaohe dragged her to the block. She struggled as he tried to make her kneel and lay her neck onto it. 

“Let me go! Stop this! No!” she screamed. Tears were forming in her eyes. Yixing panicked. Adrenaline surged through him as the man holding him jerked him backward.

“Xiaohe! No!” he shouted. He struggled to lose the man’s hold on him. The crew was starting to jeer and taunt again. Shouts of sadistic zeal rung out on the deck, shouting for the Quarter Master to make his sword extra sharp and to purposely miss just to see a bit more blood. Yixing fought and fought against his captor, shouting for Xiaohe. 

“Stop it! Stop it this instant!” Yixing shouted, but his voiced was drowned out by the crew’s hooting and sneering. One man elbowed him in the gut, but he fought back the pain. Through the crowd, he could just make out Xiaohe. The man was still holding her while another one held her steady on the block. The Quarter Master was readying to raise his sword. Yixing dug deep into his spirit and called up the loudest voice he could manage. 

“Stop it!” he shouted, his voice rising over the crowd. His heart was racing. 

“It’s _me_! _I’m the one you want_!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “ _I’m the prince_! It’s _me_! I’m the last prince, stop it!” 

It was at this moment that, slowly, the crew began to quiet down, turn, and look at him. The silence that lingered was more than silence, it was complete lack of all movement. In all the excitement, Yixing just managed to catch the eye of Captain Lau, who had a satisfied look on his face. But for a brief moment, a surge of pride swelled in Yixing’s heart. A small surge of pride for his identity, that he could save a life just by revealing himself. Slowly, the man behind Yixing began to let go of his arms. Yixing walked forward slightly, keeping his sights on the Captain and speaking directly to him.

“It’s me,” Yixing said again to Captain Lau. “I am His Royal Highness, Zhang Yixing, Crown Prince of the Twin Demons Empire. I order you to stop!”

There was another moment of silence before the crew suddenly erupted into roaring laughter. 


	12. Making Deals with Pirates

Xiaohe pressed her back against the wall of the ship, hating pirates. After Yixing’s daring rescue attempt, her neck had been spared the beheading up on the main deck, but, rather anticlimactically, confessing his true identity really only landed them back in their cell. Still, Xiaohe sighed. This was better than execution. Yixing leaned against the bars of their at-sea prison holder. It was getting dark below deck. There was just a few lanterns down in the brig, and one was near where the tall pirate was sitting on a stool. Tao had been tasked with watching the captives again, but he was busy trying to read a book that was upside down. 

The two had sat in silence for hours after Lau had demanded to know which of them was the prince. Neither spoke much, either because they were terrified that they had just made a terrible decision or because the tall pirate would throw onion peels at them whenever they opened their mouths to speak. Tao still had a bump on his forehead from when Xiaohe had knocked his head into the bars, and he wasn’t quite ready to forgive her for it.

But after a while, they heard footsteps, and First Officer Luhan appeared again. Tao stood at attention, but the First Officer just gave him cursory glance and then stood in front of the cell. 

Yixing didn’t have enough energy to give him a defiant stare, but Xiaohe apparently still had some fight left in her. Luhan looked at the two prisoners with an amused grin on his face. 

“Good evening, Your Highness,” Luhan said, mocking in his voice. Yixing only nodded in reply.

“Captain Lau wishes to speak with you two,” the First Officer said. Out of nowhere, Tao appeared by Luhan’s side with iron manacles. Luhan looked between these and the captives.

“Not necessary,” Luhan said, as he pulled out a key and inserted it into the lock. “Though maybe I should bring them just in case. I don’t like the way the little one is looking at me.”

Xiaohe had a threatening glower perpetually plastered onto her face. After what nearly happened up on the main deck earlier that day, she would never drop her guard as long as she was on this ship. The cage door opened, and Luhan led Yixing and Xiaohe out and back onto the main deck. 

It was nighttime now, and the main deck was cleared of crew. Now that all was quiet, Yixing cold finally get a look at the ship they had found themselves on. They had emerged from the bow of the ship and were now walking astern. There, the First Officer opened a set of doors. Strings of beads hung down over the passage, and they rattled as Yixing and Xiaohe walked through. 

They found themselves in an exquisite room. Persian and Afghan rugs on the floor. There were books, seashells, antique furniture. On the wall, Yixing noticed the scroll painting of Mazu the Sea Goddess. It was faded and slightly tattered around the edges, but he could see it was the exact same kind as the one he had seen on the _Chimera_. 

“I have a lot of questions,” said that man seated at the low table. On its surface, he had the pack of oracle bones unbound, and he was examining them, each and every crack. Lau smiled.

“By the state of these bones, evidently so did your father,” he said. Yixing tensed at the mentioned of his family. There on the table, he also saw his ring. Xiaohe stood closely behind Yixing. Luhan closed the doors behind them and stood aside. 

Lau motioned at the cushion on the other side of the table. Yixing swallowed as he took a seat on it. In front of him, the captain had discard the leather vest he wore and now, dressed in his gold-trimmed silken robes, Yixing felt like he was addressing the king of another small country. His back straightened as he sat, the force of old habits. Xiaohe tried to sit beside him, but Lau out a hand.

“No, you can stand.”

Yixing looked at Xiaohe apologetically. But there was fire in her eyes as she grudgingly stood up again. Yixing turned his attention back to Lau, fully prepared to bargain for their lives.

“I have been sailing these waters for eighteen years, Your Highness,” Lau said. “But I haven’t come across anything curiouser than this. A runaway prince with a pack of oracle bones, dressed like a Palace Guard of the Order. And closely behind him, a rebel army led by none other than my former First Officer, Cheng Shu. The new Chancellor of the Empire, I’m told. So, tell me. What news from the shore? What’s become of my old home?”

Yixing couldn’t tell which was more surprising: that the leader of the People’s Army had been a pirate lord’s First Officer or that Captain Lau had called the Twin Demons Empire his home. 

His throat suddenly felt parched as he recalled the events of the past week. Yixing had been in survival mode for such a long time that he had forgotten the heart wrenching pain of the memories of that night. The images that flooded back to him were of his childhood home burning in the middle of the night, his mother bleeding to death on the side of the rode, his brother’s horse disappearing forever, Captain Huang shot with an arrow and then drowning in a storm, Old Bi Yu drawing her last breath in his arms. He took a deep breath.

“There’s been a coup d’etat in the Capital,” Yixing explained slowly. “The dynasty has been thrown off and my family, murdered. Cheng Shu is the name of the leader of the People’s Army, the rebel army. The burned the palace to the ground and established a new regime.”

“Which explains why she is looking for you, then, I suppose,” Captain Lau said. “Kill the crown prince, kill the dynasty’s last hope of restoration. But, then, tell me about these.”

He tossed a turtle plastron at Yixing and it landed in his lap. Cracked and blank and devoid of all interpretations. 

“She is consulting astrologers and asking me to join her league,” Captain Lau said, his eyes narrowing. “An ordinary man would have ignored those, but I’m no ordinary man, Your Highness. I recognize oracle bones when I see them. And my former Officer has taken to the seas again in search of them. I want to know why.”

Yixing swallowed. He turned to look at Xiaohe, whose eyes looked as lost as his. 

He looked into the captain’s face and tried to decide whether or not he trust this man enough to reveal everything to him. But the more he thought about his situation and what he wanted to accomplish, he began to realize that choosing was not a luxury he could afford right now. If he was going to accomplish what he set out to do, he would need these people to be on his side. 

So he opened his mouth and started to explain. Lau listened closely and Xiaohe stood on the balls of her feet, anxious about Yixing’s decision to volunteer so much information. When Yixing finished explaining what happened at the capital and the legend of his family’s mandate to rule, Lau sat still. Turning the information over in his head. 

Lau knew this story, having grown up in the Empire as a young man. The Sea Goddess’ Mandate to Rule, bestowed upon the earliest Zhang ancestor, whose determination and selflessness had touched her spirit. As he looked the young prince in the eyes, he was beginning to see an opportunity for himself.

“Your Highness,” he said. “What if I lent you my ship and ferried you to the Goddess’ Realm? What sort of reward would you bestow upon me and my crew?”

Yixing was taken back at the swiftness of his suggestion. He had been expecting to bargain for at least another hour or so. He shrugged.

“Anything that would be in my power to give you,” Yixing said. Behind him, he could hear Xiaohe cursing under her breath at him. Lau smirked. He stood from the table and Yixing followed suit. Lau walked over to a cabinet in the corner of the room, opened it, and seemed to be looking at something inside of it. He spoke with his back turned to them.

“Piracy is a dangerous occupation, Your Highness,” he said. “But if one is steadfast and skilled, the reward for risking one’s life can be very satisfying. For a while, of course. I may be a pirate lord, but can you imagine what great reward occupies my mind the most?”

He closed the cabinet and turned back to them, his eyes soft.

“Retirement,” he said. “I may be a pirate captain, but I don’t want to die like one. When I’m done being a scourge on these seas, what I want is…” he paused for a moment. 

“What I want is to return to my home,” he said slowly. “To my family. If I do this for you, restore you to the throne, I want pardons for all my men, licenses for them, to pillage enemy ships.”

 It suddenly made sense to Yixing, looking into the captain’s sad eyes. This was as much about getting revenge on Cheng as it was about returning home for Captain Lau. This was a man who had known pain in his life, and it demanded respect. Yixing straightened up again.

“Have we a deal then?” Yixing asked. Before he could even stretch out his hand to seal the bargain, Yixing felt Xiaohe pulled him away. 

“Yixing, wait!” she said. “Can I speak with you for a minute?”

“What is it? Keep your voice down.”

They whispered in the corner while both Luhan and the captain watched them with amused looks on their faces. Xiaohe creased her brow at the prince.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Look, I know what I have to do now to get my life back,” Yixing whispered back. “Before Old Bi Yu died, she told me I had to find Mazu, bury the oracle, and come bearing gifts, and only then would she renew the blessing. The rebels are on their way there right now, and the only way I can beat them is if I have a ship. They happen to have a ship!” 

Xiaohe rolled her eyes.

“They’re pirates, though!” she said. “And he’s the captain of the pirates!”

“And like me, he’s also got unfinished business with Cheng Shu and the People’s Army. My enemy’s enemy is my friend.”

Xiaohe huffed her breathe at him, but when she looked back at Yixing, her eyes betrayed her concern.

“Look, these are the kinds people that I grew up surrounded by, I know their type!” she whispered. “Thieves and scoundrels, all of them. You can’t trust them enough to be making deals. They could turn on us at any minute, and they wouldn’t lose a bit of sleep over it. Men with no honor can’t be held accountable, they could do literally _anything_! And we don’t have enough leverage. We are on _their_ ship.”

Yixing held onto her forearm and gave it a reassuring squeeze. He felt bad. He could tell she was scared, and he wished there were another way. But there wasn’t.

“We don’t have a choice here!” he said, holding her gaze. “If we stand even the smallest chance of reaching the Realm of the Goddess before the rebels do, this is the decision we have to make. It may not be wise, but it’s all we have.”

The two looked at each other with intense, earnest expressions, but in the end Xiaohe gave in. She ripped her arm from Yixing’s grasp and cast a venomous look at Captain Lau, who returned the gesture.

“Alright,” Xiaohe whispered. “Alright, fine. But be careful.”

“I will,” Yixing said. He turned back to Captain Lau and offered his hand. Lau smiled as he reached forward and shook the prince’s hand. 

“First Officer,” Lau said and Luhan stood at attention. “Come morning, tell the Sailing Master to chart a course for Jasmine Port. We will start our journey there.”

“Yes, sir,” Luhan said. Lau sat back down and moved the oracle bones aside. He reached for an animal skin and drank from it. He motioned for Yixing to be seated once more.

“Now, when I asked earlier today which of you was the prince,” Lau said. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

Yixing shrugged, hoping that the new deal they’d brokered meant that they could relax a bit while they were on the ship.

“Well, now we can have a civilized conversation, Your Highness,” Lau said. “Though I am afraid we don’t have any accommodations fitting for a member of royalty. You’ll just have to settle for the usual arrangements. That won’t be a problem, will it?”

Yixing didn’t know what that meant, but he agreed to it anyway. Lau smiled.

“Good,” he said. “Now that we known who you are, and you know who I am, let me introduce my First Officer, Luhan.” 

Luhan stepped forward and just gave a curt nod. Lau had rescued the boy from a slaving ship when he was just a kid and made him First Officer off the bat. He was loyal to the captain like no other. Lau began eyeing Xiaohe with a curious look. When his gaze rested on her face for a little too long, she began to shift uncomfortably, afraid that he would figure her out. 

There was definitely something a bit off about the little one, Lau thought to himself. Something he couldn’t quite place, but it was slightly haunting. It was the eyes, he thought. 

“Well, what about this one?” Lau asked. “Can I still kill him?”

Luhan laughed, and Yixing and Xiaohe traded looks. Both the First Officer and the captain obviously still thought she was a boy, so it only made sense to keep it that way, for further protection. Yixing turned his gaze back to the captain.

“This boy is my vassal, Captain,” Yixing said, his voice as steady and even as he could manage. “His name is Jun. Do not harm him.”

“The boy is your vassal,” Lau repeated.

“Oh. Oh, I see, is this… are you two…” Luhan suddenly asked, looking between the lost-looking prince and his tiny, skinny bodyguard, noting the intense looks they shared every now and then. He smirked. 

“Is it _that_ sort of thing between you two?” Luhan asked. Xiaohe looked just a little embarrassed, but Yixing’s face immediately flushed.

“He’s… a eunuch,” Yixing offered. Lau just laughed.

“You must have a glaring lack of creativity, Your Highness, if you think that lost jewels discredit the possibility,” Lau said, both he and the First Officer laughing. 

“Nevertheless, as you say,” Lau said, eyeing Jun the Vassal once more. Xiaohe still had that defiant look about her. “He won’t be harmed. First Officer, if you will give Eunuch Jun his sword back, please. And then show them where they will be staying.”

Luhan went to the corner of the room and grabbed the broadsword that had been confiscated from the two and he shoved it back into Xiaohe’s arms. Then, he motioned for the two to follow him. Yixing shared one last look with the captain before standing and following Luhan out of the room. 

Once they were back on the main deck, Luhan led them to the waist of the ship, where there was a trapdoor that led down into the bunker deck. When they made their way down, they realized that this was where the crew had disappeared to. On the sides of the ship, their cargo was stowed and secured, but in the middle, there was one, long, raised pallet covered in cloth which functioned as a bunk for the crew. The men all slept on it, huddled in their clothes and snoring like hogs. The smell was something else altogether.

Luhan led them down the line of sleeping thieves, and Xiaohe’s eyes widened. The First Officer stopped at the very end, where there was a gap between a wall and the last man. Barely large enough for one more person. Luhan smirked.

“This shouldn’t be a problem for you two, then,” Luhan said.

“There is barely space for a single person here,” Xiaohe protested. Luhan frowned. 

“You can sleep here,” Luhan said. “Or we can go back up to the main deck, and I can arrange for you to sleep at the bottom of the ocean.”

Yixing held Xiaohe back before she could even think about fighting back.

“It’s fine,” Yixing said, more to Xiaohe than to Luhan. The First Officer smirked again.

“If you’re staying onboard, you will both have to do your share of work,” Luhan said. “All hands on deck in the morning for roll begins at dawn. We should reach Jasmine Port in three days. Sleep tight.”

His footsteps echoed as he ascended the stairs and disappeared back onto the main deck. Xiaohe let out an exasperated breath as she turned and looked back at their sleeping arrangements. This was less than desirable, for sure. She looked around, but just as Luhan had said, there were limited options for alternate arrangements. She doubted that either of them would get much rest in such a state. She felt torn. On one hand she was angry at Yixing but also thankful for him. On one hand, she wanted to place herself between Yixing and danger, but she also did not want to sleep pressed up against a complete stranger, a pirate no less.

“You take the wall,” Yixing whispered.

“No, you should take the wall—,” she began to protest.

“It’s fine,” Yixing said quietly. “You should take the wall. It’s only right that you should.”

To keep Xiaohe from fighting back, Yixing took the liberty of sliding into place first. It was awful, he had to press his back against the other sleeping man in order to make enough room for Xiaohe to lay down in the rest of the space provided. And even then, it was a tight squeeze. Xiaohe groaned a bit as she finally laid down on the pallet. They both had to pull their limbs in close to their bodies in order to give each other space. 

Even then, they still lay face-to-face, quite nearly chest-to-chest. They both tenses up, being forced so close together. The smell of body odor mixed with the smell of linseed oil and salt water, and the collective heat from all the human mass only added to the discomfort. Still, Yixing sighed and supposed that at least they weren’t on that island anymore, and they were on their way to make things right.

“At least we’re together, right?” he tried to joke. Xiaohe narrowed her eyes at him. 

“Sorry,” he whispered.

“I’m going to make a prediction,” Xiaohe whispered. “We probably won’t get much sleep while we’re here.”

Yixing laughed weakly. “If we do this quickly, we may not have to get used to it.”

“There was more than enough space in his cabin,” Xiaohe whispered. “The least he could have done was let you stay there, you’re the prince, after all.”

“And leave you here with these people?”

“At the very least, I would have had more space down here to myself,” Xiaohe whispered, only half joking. Another silence settled in between them, but neither could make sleep come to them. Xiaohe tried to look anywhere but directly at Yixing’s face, which was difficult since sleeping on her back would take up too much space, but turning completely around felt even more uncomfortably intimate than facing him. She tried to tell herself that everything was fine. At least this way, she could watch his back.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” she whispered, her voice lingering in the dark between them. She could feel him breathing. 

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea, but it’s an idea,” Yixing whispered back, his voice low. “The only one I have right now, so we’ll have to bet on it.”

Xiaohe sighed and nodded. Her face was obscured by shadow, but Yixing could feel her uncertainty. His heart felt heavy all of a sudden. He couldn’t help but feel that everything she’d been through these past couple of days was his fault. He felt responsible.

“Xiaohe, I’m sorry you were dragged into this,” he whispered. “I know the only reason you’re here is because Captain Huang forced you into it, because you were the one who happened to be nearby. But I never would have gotten this far without you.”

Yixing pressed his lips together for a moment.

“So I should ask,” he said. “Do you want to see this all the way through? Because you don’t have to. You helped me get this far, and if you want, I can ask Lau to make port and then you’ll be free to go. You don’t have to come with me and keep sleeping on this ship in this cramped space if you don’t want to. I’ve endangered your life enough as it is. What do you say?”

Xiaohe tried t pierce through the darkness and read the prince’s gaze, but she couldn’t see his face. She just felt his eyes looking at her. She gave a slow exhale. Truthfully, the thought of finally getting away from this nightmare was appealing to her. Getting away from pirates and danger and lost princes, it was a liberating thought. But each time she thought about getting away, she felt her heart being squeezed by a thin, sharp thread, which was already inexplicably and irrevocably twisted into a knot with the prince’s fate in the middle of it. 

“It’s true, Captain Huang more-or-less forced me into this by making me swear the oath before jumping into the boat,” she whispered. “It seems burdensome, but to tell you the truth, I’ve never felt like this before.”

Yixing raised a brow at her.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Not sure. But… suddenly, I have more conviction in one promise than I’ve ever had in my life,” Xiaohe whispered, her heart racing at the thought of having a new purpose in life. In the dark, her smile was weak but genuine.

“So of course I have to see this through. A promise is a promise.”

Yixing fell silent or a moment. “Are you sure about this?” he asked. He felt Xiaohe nod her head.

“I’ll stay,” she said. Yixing couldn’t deny that he was glad of her decision. 

After an hour or so, Yixing was finally overcome with fatigue, and despite the discomfort, he fell asleep. Xiaohe kept her eyes open a bit longer. She was listening to the deep breathing sounds that Yixing was making and training herself to distinguish between the sound of his breathing and violent snores of the other men below deck. She couldn’t help but feel that everything was beginning to fall into place now. Just as her eyes closed, finally, she heard Yixing whisper something in his sleep.

“Ma,” he said, his voice pained. Xiaohe felt a painful tug at her heart.


	13. Palms and Fists

For someone who had a less-than-genial relationship with his father, Yixing dreamed about him a lot. The dream started out quietly enough, with him as a young boy being brought into the throne room thrice daily to bow and pay his respects to the Emperor and the Ancestors. In this particular dream, he was a small eight-year-old boy. In those days, most of his time was spent in the harem being cared for by nurses, spoiled with attention by the women, taught to read and write. The only times he ever saw the Emperor were during these short visits to the throne room.

What always stood out in his memory was the color red since the room was overwhelmingly so. Red flooring, red columns, red decoration, a red throne with a red cushion, red beams on the ceiling, red dragons coiled around the legs of the royal throne. And his father, dressed in red robes with golden trim, two demons embroidered into the chest of his garments, the Imperial headdress resting on his royal head. In his eight-year-old eyes, the man was an untouchable giant, and Yixing was very much afraid. 

But in this crimson dreamworld, the young prince would get down on his knees, as he was instructed to three times a day, and he would kowtow to his terrifying demigod father. But when his forehead touched the wooden floor, the scenery changed. Instead of red, the throne room was ashen gray and cold. The dragons coiling protectively around the throne turned into serpents, and the stately columns that held the ceiling had fallen, and the ceiling was gone. Above him, a storm was churning in the heavens. And when he lifted his head to look at the Emperor, he was no longer the godly giant that made him feel small.

There was a young man with pale skin sitting on the throne with a helpless look on his face, eyes wide with horror at the death and decay that surrounded him. It was only when the young emperor looked into the little boy’s eyes that he realized that the emperor was himself. 

 

—

 

When Yixing’s eyes opened, he found that the effort physically pained him. He forgot, momentarily, that he was on a ship and his heart stopped when he felt the ground lurching beneath him. His eyes darted around, scanning his environment. He found Xiaohe still sleeping, but through the cracks of the deck above, blue light was starting to filter through. Dawn was approaching.

Mornings were becoming hard for the prince, who had to wake from the bliss of unconsciousness and ignorance and return to a world where his loved ones were dead and an army of rebels was hunting him. But this morning was especially annoying because the pirate Yixing was forced to sleep next to had wrapped his arms around the prince in the middle of the night. And the man was evidently having an especially _enjoyable_ dream as he was whispering some vulgar things in his sleep.

“Yah… Ling Ling… tell me something… does your husband do it like this?” the man was muttering, and Yixing’s skin crawled. The man tightened his hold, snaking his hand around the prince’s torso. Yixing squirmed, trying to get out of the man’s grasp without waking him. But each time he tried to wriggle his way out, the man just pulled him even closer. The man started to make kissing noises with his mouth, and Yixing groaned.

“Please… come here…” the man kept muttering. At this point, the man started to nuzzle the back of Yixing’s shoulder. Yixing tensed and then shuddered at the contact. 

 _Let me go, let me go_ , he kept chanting in his head as he tried to wrestle his way out of the man’s embrace. 

“Please… put your hands on me…” he said. The man’s hand were starting to wander. He was still muttering his sleep. Yixing’s patience had been tested too long. He sighed, freed one arm from the man’s hold and elbow him in the face before he could bring his mouth any closer. 

“Ack—!” the man shouted, arms coming off Yixing and flying to his face. He jerked out of his position so violently that he shoved Yixing aside, shoving him towards Xiaohe and waking everyone else below deck. The quiet was torn asunder by the curses and shouts that suddenly filled the space. Yixing felt as if he had just awakened a sleeping dragon. 

“What in the world—?” Xiaohe muttered, waking up. Yixing was just about to explain himself when he felt someone grab the front of his clothes and pulled off the bunk. Yixing grabbed onto the man’s wrists as the pirate brought him closer to his face. His nose was bloody and his eyes, wild with anger.

“ _You pathetic little—_!” the man said, shaking Yixing violently. 

“I’m sorry—!” Yixing blurted out, but the man was already making a fist and raising it to Yixing’s face.

“You like to fight in your sleep, eh?” the pirate shouted, spit flying into Yixing’s face. “Let’s find you a more permanent sleep, then!”

“Stop it! Let go of him!” Xiaohe shouted, jumping onto her feet and trying to wedge herself between the gigantic man and the prince. She tried to throw the man of balance, make him let go his grip on Yixing’s shirt, but his grasp was like iron. The pirates in the back were egging him on, shouting profanities at both Yixing and Xiaohe. 

“It was an accident, I swear!” Yixing said, fear flooding his eyes, apparent in his voice. The man looked like a demon with blood flowing down his face. He brought his elbow back and Yixing shut his eyes and turned his face aside, readying himself for the blow.

Xiaohe ripped herself from the pirates who were holding her back. She launched herself at the man holding Yixing, grabbed his forearm, brought her mouth down to it, and clamped her teeth down hard on his skin. 

“Agh—!” the man screamed in pain. The force of Xiaohe’s bite and the ensuing pain made him let go of Yixing’s clothes and the prince dropped down to the ground. But when the man jerked his arm away from Xiaohe’s teeth, he elbowed her in the chest, knocking her to the wall and knocking the wind out of her. Xiaohe began grasping at her rib cage, where her chest bindings were starting to restrict her breathing again. But in the moment, that same man had a hand around her throat.

She grabbed and scratched at the hand clamped around her windpipe. Yixing got back to his feet and leapt to Xiaohe’s defense. 

“What in hell is going on down here?!” 

The Quarter Master appeared in the middle of the commotion just in time to see Yixing kick his attacker in the gut. When the man gripped his stomach and fell over to the side, Yixing looked up, met the Quarter Master’s irate gaze, and the blood drained from his face. The next time someone grabbed him by the shirt, it was the Quarter Master dragging both he and Xiaohe back up to the main deck.

“You two think you can come aboard and cause trouble on your first night?” the Quarter Master shouted, throwing him and Xiaohe down onto the boards. The Quarter Master was already reaching for his sword.

“Let me explain! Please!” Yixing shouted, but he was silenced by the ringing of steel being brandished as the Quarter Master produced his sword.

“ _You_ will be silent!” Quarter Master screamed, pointing the tip of his blade at the prince. “ _I_ will explain things around here! You may be the captain’s guest, but you answer to me as the rest of the crew does, vermin!”

“He didn’t start the trouble!” Xiaohe shouted, still holding onto her ribs. “I saw it, that man grabbed him first!”

“Liar!” the rest of the crew shouted behind the Quarter Master, and Yixing shrank back, knowing full well that he _had_ been the one to elbow the other man first. 

“Shut up!” Quarter Master shouted and then switched the blade over to Xiaohe. “And you will hold your tongue, lion cub, or I’ll slice it from your mouth! The only one whose witness holds any weight around here is mine! And what I saw was His Highness starting an ungodly row below deck!”

“And I apologize!” Yixing shouted in his own defense. Xiaohe was irked that Yixing kept apologizing.

“He drew blood, Quarter Master Zhou!” shouted the dreaming pirate whose face was red with his own blood. “I want to see some punishment!”

“And there will be,” the Quarter Master said, turning his gaze to the captain’s guests once more. When a smile appeared on Quarter Master Zhou’s face, it looked cruel.

“My dear prince,” Quarter Master Zhou said. “You may be the lord of the land, but out here at sea, we are not your subjects.”

Yixing swallowed. Quarter Master Zhou put his sword back into its sheath and then turned to the crew.

“Men!” Quarter Master Zhou said. “Drop your buckets and scrubs. Take the day off, play some lots! Today, His Royal Highness is going to scrub the _entire_ _ship_!” 

When the crew erupted into shouts of approval and clapped each other on the back, Yixing’s expression remained blank. He had no idea yet what such a punishment meant. 

 

—

 

Zhou shoved the bucket into Yixing’s arms, and the prince nearly dropped it from the weight. He put the bucket down on the deck and then Zhou tossed him a wooden scrub with tough bristles, stained brown and black from years of use. Whatever was in the bucket smelled terrible. Zhou kicked at the bucket before stomping down once on the deck.

“Do you know what quality serves a ship best, Your Highness?” Zhou asked. Yixing looked at him. The Quarter Master was stout, short man, but was built like a boulder. His arms bulged in his sleeves and his chest was perpetually puffed with muscle. He had a face like a gorilla.

“No, sir,” Yixing answered. The Quarter Master scoffed.

“Buoyancy, first,” the Quarter Master said, “And then watertightness. Look down at the deck. What do you see?”

Yixing shrugged. “Floor boards, sir.”

“And what condition would you say the floor boards are in?”

Yixing looked down at the deck and couldn’t see anything wrong with them. When he looked at Zhou with a lank expression, the Quarter Master glowered.

“The deck needs to swabbed constantly,” Zhou said. “Be very thorough. The boards need to be soaked in saltwater to keep the planks damp and swollen. It needs to be tarred to keep it watertight. Start here at the bow then go astern. I will inspect your work, and I expect nothing but godly perfection from the son of an Emperor.” 

Quarter Master Zhou cast him one last dirty look before turning and leaving the prince to his punishment. Elsewhere on deck, the men had already overturned boxes and barrels and made tables on which to play gambling games and watch with smug self-satisfaction as the prince was made to do the work of the lowest of sailors. 

Yixing looked down at the pair of buckets. Inside one was saltwater, to dampen the boards, and in the other was a mixture of pine tar, linseed oil, and beeswax. He looked up at the sun that was beginning to climb to its peak and then at the long stretch of deck before him. The ship could be anything between 15 and 20 meters. With a sigh of resignation, he undid the buttons on his sleeves and pushed them up. He got down to his, clasping the scrub in his hands, and began his task. 

After an hour of labor, Yixing was starting to understand why he had been given this particular punishment. As the son of an emperor, he had never done a day’s worth of real work in his life. His soft palms were starting to redden and blister from the constant rubbing against the wood of the scrub. The pain was not helped by constant contact with the salt in the bucket of sea water. His knees suffered from all the kneeling, his back suffered from constantly bending over, his shoulder suffered from the endless back-and-forth movement. The sun was beating down on his head, fueling headaches. And all the while, the crew taunted and insulted him. 

“You missed a spot, Your Highness!”

“It is quite a different view from your knees, isn’t it, Good Prince?”

“You honor us with this service, Your Highness!”

“Be careful, you might cut your delicate hands on the sea water!”

Yixing clenched his jaw tight, forcing himself not to say anything in response. But the hot sun and the gibes were starting to make him angry. His scrubbing became more aggressive as he took his emotions out on the wood of the deck. He thought about the little boy in his dream again, about the pale-faced young man sitting on the throne. 

“Agh!” he yelped, dropping the scrub and bringing his hand to his face. He stared down at his palm, eyes wide as the blood. The first of his blisters had burst.

 

—

 

She tossed the last of the small bullets into the sack where the rest of the ammunition was stored, and then Xiaohe stood to stretch her back. After that morning’s commotion, she had been given the punishment of going into the gunpowder closet and sorting the ammunition. It was a tedious job, but she smirked a little at the state of their ammunition supply. There weren’t many cannon balls left for their cannons, and although they were well-stocked with pistols, most did not have bullets to match. Then, there were the swords. The straight swords outnumbered the broadswords, and man had to be sharpened. She spent the remainder of her time running the blades against a sharpener.

After finishing, Xiaohe chose an hour before the next mealtime, when she knew that the majority of the crew would be above deck to head down below to see about Yixing. It was nearing the evening, and the prince had disappeared after he finished swabbing the deck. He hadn’t been seen for a while. It would be a push to say that she was worried about him, but she _was_ getting a little anxious. She pulled open the trapdoor that led below deck and her footsteps echoed through the empty chamber. 

“Yixing?” she called out tentatively. Despite the last of the orange sunlight that flooded the deck aloft, the space below was as dark as night. Illuminated only by the slivers of light the came through the cracks in the deck. She narrowed her eyes, trying to get them to adjust more quickly to the darkness as she searched for the prince.

“Back here,” said a voice, and Xiaohe followed it astern. She found Yixing leaning against the mast, wrapping something around his hands. 

“The next meal will be soon,” Xiaohe said, approaching him. When she was close enough, she realized that he had been bandaging his hands. 

Yixing was looping a narrow strip of linen around his palm. When Xiaohe looked down at his hands, she cringed at their condition. Blisters, raw and bloody, marred the soft, fleshy mounds of his palms. Yixing’s brows were knit together, his expression betraying the pain he felt in his hands. 

“From swabbing the deck?” Xiaohe asked, incredulity in her tone. Yixing scoffed. 

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, his voice betraying his irritation. “Poor, weak, pampered little prince can’t handle a little swabbing, right? Might cut his hands on the bristles or collapse after scrubbing a little too hard.”

Xiaohe raised an eyebrow at him. “What’s with that attitude? I didn’t say anything.”

Yixing scoffed again. “Yeah, but you were thinking it,” he said, continuing to loop the linen around his hands. Xiaohe bit her lip as she looked down at the state of his palms. It was an astonishing sight, but not the least bit surprising. She doubted Yixing had ever done so laborious in his life. Blistering palms after hours of being made to swab the deck of an entire ship was to be expected. Still, seeing the raw, red flesh on his palms bothered her. For any one person to scrub down the entirety of a full-length ship was too much to ask of anyone. 

“You have a habit of telling people what to think?” Xiaohe said. She crossed her arms. “You scrubbed down the entire deck without putting up a fuss about it? If I were you, I would have shoved the brush in the Quarter Master’s mouth and been done with it.”

Yixing laughed in spite of himself. “And get yourself killed for sure, in the process,” he said. Xiaohe clenched her fists, his body palms upsetting her.

“Why didn’t you come find me?” she asked. Yixing shrugged.

“Because I didn’t need your help.”

“Sure you didn’t,” she said, grabbing his wrist and holding it up to his own eyes. “As evidenced by the state of your hands.”

“It’ll all turn to callus eventually, won’t it?” Yixing said, wincing as he tried to stretch out his fingers. “I didn’t need your help. I was fine. And anyway, it’s over now, deck’s swabbed and everything.”

Xiaohe huffed a breath at him before grabbing his wrist again. Yixing winced as she took the roll of linen from him and began to unwrap his hands. 

“Hey!” Yixing shouted.

“Who taught you how to wrap bandages? You’re doing it wrong,” she said, taking the linen roll completely from him and rolling it up again. “Give me your hand.”

Yixing hesitated, but he knew that even if he refused to give her his hand, Xiaohe was not above wrestling it from him. He stretched his hand out to her. When she took his hand into her own, her touch was surprisingly soft. She started at his wrist and began to unroll the bandage around it, working her way out and then back around. She wrapped his wrist first before turning his hand around and looping it around the back. Yixing watched closely as her nimble fingers roped the bandage in a figure-eight motion around his fingers and wrist, keeping his thumb free. The dexterity with which she moved reminded him of dancing, it was almost graceful.

He happened to look at up her face as she kept wrapping the bandage around his hands, and he was suddenly struck with the most overwhelming feeling that he had been here before. 

Not here as in aboard the _Phoenix_ , but here as in standing in front of Xiaohe, his hands in hers, her gentle touch on his palms. 

It occurred to Yixing that he’d never taken time to look at Xiaohe’s face. As in, _really_ look at it. All this time, he had only given her a cursory glance as he spoke to her, looking but not truly seeing. He wondered, again, how she had ever fooled him into thinking she was a boy. Even with her closely, unevenly cropped, boyish hairstyle, she retained her thick, long lashes, naturally pink lips, wide, almond-shaped eyes. As Xiaohe looked down at his palm, he happened to wonder what she had looked like with long hair—

The thought suddenly hit him.

“What did you say?” he said quietly. Xiaohe didn’t look up when she replied.

“Huh? Nothing.”

Yixing narrowed his eyes at her.

“No, you said… you said ‘The Blue Parrot.’”

Xiaohe had been in the middle of securing the bandage with a knot when she froze. 

“What?”

“You said you worked at The Blue Parrot, didn’t you? Back on the island,” Yixing said, watching her face for any reaction. A satisfied smile appeared on his face. 

“Xiaohe, you’re the palm reader. Aren’t you?”

She wasn’t sure how to react. She wasn’t sure how he was expecting her to react. Xiaohe secured the bandage and then let go of Yixing’s hand, returning her own to her sides. 

“Well, not anymore,” Xiaohe answered. She stepped past Yixing and sat down on the bunks. She took out the broadsword Captain Huang had bequeathed her, took it out of its sheath and then began sharpening it with a whetstone she had taken from the ship’s gunpowder closet. Yixing turned to face her.

“Don’t you find it funny?” Yixing asked. “That you and I are meeting again?” 

Xiaohe chewed on her bottom lip. “I was going to give it back to you, I swear,” she finally said. Yixing raised his brows.

“Eventually,” Xiaohe explained, putting the whetstone down. “I was planning on ransoming it back to you or pawning it off. I was behind on rent, Madame Rui was pressuring me to take clients to make up for the debt, I needed the money quickly.”

When she looked up at Yixing, he still had that amused smile on his face.

“Xiaohe, I’m not angry,” he said. 

“Still,” Xiaohe said, going back to sharpening the sword’s edge. “I’m not a palm-reading waitress-thief. Not anymore, and I don’t want you thinking it.”

Yixing laughed. “You have a habit of telling people what to think?”

She smirked.

“And anyway,” she continued. “It didn’t seem like you were too fond of being royalty, so I figured you wouldn’t miss a ring.” 

“Alternatively,” Yixing said. “You might have told me about the money issue. I might have helped you.”

At that, Xiaohe couldn’t help but laugh gently.

“Would you have, though?” she asked, though there was no derision in her tone. She stood up.

“You didn’t even realize that we’d met before until now,” Xiaohe said. “Because I’m suddenly useful to you.”

Xiaohe thought about that day, when she stole the prince’s royal seal. She remembered being dragged out, onto the street and made to kneel before Yixing while Madame Rui begged him to punish her in one way or another. She couldn’t remember the prince ever even looking at her. She knew he didn’t care for the crown, so the ring was of little personal importance to him. Evidently, neither was she, in that moment. Not that she could blame him, of course. He was from a different class of people back then. Now, they were the same. 

Yixing frowned a bit. True, that although Yixing would not have classified himself as a spoiled, selfish prince, he had to confess that the everyday plight of the common rustic or the common beggar never sufficiently interested him. He knew in the back of his mind that it was the responsibility of the emperor to ensure the prosperity of his people, and to lift their spirits. But he himself never spent much time with the townspeople except on the New Year celebrations and the odd visit to Luo Zhixiang’s favorite bars and gambling dens. Xiaohe was the first common person he had ever spent this much time with. 

He couldn’t formulate a response before Xiaohe walked toward him and then looked down at his bandaged hands.

“You should change those bandages before going to bed,” Xiaohe said. “Come find me if you don’t know how to do them properly. The evening meal is just this crusty type of bread, but they’ll be handing it out soon.”

Xiaohe was about to walk back to the ladder and climb back up to the main deck, but Yixing called out to her. He was still working on a response. He wanted to tell her that the person he was back then really would have taken an interest in her plight, would have helped her somehow. All he could manage to say was:

“Your hair used to be longer.”

Xiaohe just touched the back of her head in reply.

 

—

 

Quarter Master Zhou was not satisfied by the quality of Yixing’s work that day, so the following morning he was subjected to the same punishment. It was nearing midday now and Yixing was still on his knees scrubbing the deck with the same mixture of tar and seawater. He was trying not to touch the mixture with his hands, which were still bandaged. The task was taking him much longer because he was being less aggressive with the scrubbing in an effort to spare his hands. Blood was starting to soak through the linen, but he couldn’t stop to change them. 

Sitting atop a barrel, the Quarter Master was sharpening his sword with a whetstone and occasionally looking over at Yixing and chuckling to himself. Yixing winced as a bit of the saltwater soaked through the bandage. That was when he heard a wet rag being dumped onto the deck, just a little to his left. Xiaohe rolled her sleeves up and got down to her knees. She dipped the rag into the tar and oil mixture and began swabbing beside him. Yixing creased his brow.

“What are you doing?” Yixing asked. “You’re supposed to be splicing rope, not—,”

“I finished my task already,” Xiaohe said without looking at him. She just kept scrubbing. In the corner of his eye, Yixing noticed that Zhou had left his perch on the barrel and was coming right toward them. 

“The Quarter Master is coming over here, Xiaohe, you should—”

Quarter Master Zhou crossed the length of the ship quicker than expected. He appeared where Yixing and Xiaohe knelt and kicked the bucket of saltwater, soaking them both. He bent down and grabbed Xiaohe by the sleeve and pulled her up to her feet as though she were a doll and he, a reckless child. 

“Get up, you,” he said with a snarl. He shoved her back and she fell back onto the deck. 

Yixing’s hands aside, Xiaohe was getting sick and tired of being pushed, shoved, and otherwise manhandled by pirates. If he tried to put his hands on her one more time, she would not just take it quietly. She shot back up to her feet with a defiant look on her face. She held the Quarter Master’s gaze as she walked back to where Yixing still knelt. She bent down and picked up the rag with perfect nonchalance.

“Xiaohe, _stop it_!” Yixing whispered. 

As soon as she reached for the rag, Zhou had his hands on her again.

“Imbecile!” she shouted, shoving her back again. Xiaohe stayed on her feet. “How _dare_ you defy me!”

“I don’t need your help!” Yixing yelled to her, silently begging her not to provoke the man any further. A small crowd of the other crewmen were beginning to gather around them, suddenly intrigued by the little White Lion palace eunuch who dared disobey the Quarter Master’s orders. On Zhou’s face, his anger was suddenly replaced by amusement.

“You cheeky little bastard,” the Quarter Master said, spitting onto the ground. Xiaohe stood her ground. “Are you looking for a fight, now, are you?”

Yixing tried to catch Xiaohe’s gaze, but her eyes were locked onto the Quarter Master. She wasn’t itching for a fight, but she did want to get these damned pirates off her back once and for all. The crowd of onlookers began to grow, and Yixing was getting worried. 

Zhou laughed as he started to untie his sword from his waist. He discarded it to the side and began to pace in a circle, his gaze still on the disguised girl.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, little one,” he said. “I have an idea. Let’s have a little spar, shall we? Right here on this newly swabbed deck. If you can beat me, then His Highness doesn’t have to scrub the deck anymore. If you lose… I’ll chop your hands off and _you_ can scrub the deck with the stumps at your wrists.”

Xiaohe’s looked unfazed. Yixing had a terrifying feeling that she might accept the terms. So he shot up to his feet.

“Eunuch Jun, a word please!” he said, taking her by the arm and puling her aside. He kept his voice low.

“Stop this. Now,” he said. “I told you before, I _don’t_ _need_ your help!”

“Swabbing this entire ship is the work of a crew of ten men, not just one person,” Xiaohe whispered back. “It’s not a question of ability, it’s a question of fairness!”

“You want to argue _fairness_ with _pirates_?” Yixing said. “Drop the subject! Just apologize!”

“What for?” Xiaohe said, her pride getting in the way. “He said he’d lift the punishment if I could beat him. I’ve fought people like him before. Think of your hands!”

“Think of _your_ hands!” Yixing said in a hushed tone. 

“This isn’t just about scrubbing the deck, Your Highness,” Xiaohe said. “If you can demonstrate that you can hold your own against them, we get respect!”

“ _To the depths with respect_!” Yixing said. “Do you really think you can come out of a brawl like this unscathed?”

“Not unscathed,” Xiaohe said. “But I’ve never been afraid of a little scathing—”

“That man is built like a bear, he could break your neck like a tree branch,” he said, grabbing onto her arm.

“Let go of me, Yixing,” she said. “Or it’ll be you who gets slugged in the nose.”

Yixing hardened his expression toward her. “Be reasonable, Xiaohe, please!” he whispered. “You’re going to get hurt! The Quarter Master will just make things worse for the both of us, you’ll get us nowhere! What if you lose?”

Xiaohe grinned. “Oh, but what if I win?”

She tore her herself from Yixing and stepped into the circle that the crew had formed around them. They started taunting and jeering again as the Quarter Master cracked his knuckles and stretched his neck, preparing himself. Xiaohe hoped that her knees weren’t shaking. Her stomach felt like it was shooting up into her throat. The adrenaline rushing through her tried to subdue the feelings of fear that were fighting to overwhelm her. 

Xiaohe had fought people before back on land, and she was used to the street brawl sort of fighting, where intensity and not technique decided the victor. She prayed that she might be able to outwit him if she kept herself focused. Yixing tried to grab onto Xiaohe again, but he was held back some other members of the crew, who were eager to see some action. 

The Quarter Master put up his fists and launched himself at her before she was ready. Xiaohe dodged the first punch, but the second one came out of nowhere and rammed into her rib cage. She fell onto the deck and the crew erupted into cheers. A smug smile spread across Zhou’s face while Yixing fought against the pirates holding him back. Zhou spat again, onto the floor where Xiaohe was holding herself. She couldn’t breathe from the blunt pain and the squeeze of her bindings. 

“What happened to all your spirit, Lion Cub?” Zhou taunted. Xiaohe slowly rose to he feet. Once again, Zhou rushed before she was properly on her feet. He got down on the ground, swung his leg, and knocked Xiaohe’s weight out from underneath her. She fell onto the deck, the wind knocked out of her again. 

The crew all laughed at the audacious eunuch who challenged the Quarter Master. Xiaohe sat up, holding onto her side. She wouldn’t be able to beat him on strength, but if she stood a chance at all, she would need to at least be faster and smarter. Her thoughts were hazy as she tried to stand again. When the Zhou turned to see the eunuch back on his feet, he was amused, impressed almost. 

“You just don’t know when to give up, do you?” Zhou rushed at the boy again, but this time when his fist swung at her face, Xiaohe ducked down. With his arms out, he left his rib cage open. Xiaohe grunted as she swung her elbow and jammed it into the unprotected part of his gut. 

Yixing was right; this man was built like a bear. The force of the blow wasn’t enough to floor Zhou, but it was just enough to jostle him, throw him off his game momentarily. Xiaohe emerged behind him, equally shaken by the blow. The crowd had quieted down and instead of jeers and taunts, there was a murmur. Zhou turned and his expression was different. He was no longer amused. He was furious. He snarled as he charged toward Xiaohe.

Again, she ducked down, and when she shot back up, the top of her head collided with his face. Then, she knee-kicked him in the gut once more. This time, when Zhou was forced backward, his hands flew to his face. When he took them away, he revealed a bloody nose and eyes burning with murderous intent. The crowd was whispering again: the feared Quarter Master, bloodied by a boy half his size. For the first time since joining the fight, Xiaohe felt truly terrified. 

“Son of a bitch!” he shouted. He spat on the deck again and blood sprayed onto the wood. Xiaohe took a step back. 

“I’ll kill you! With my bare hands, _I’ll kill you_!” The Quarter Master charged at Xiaohe once more, but this time, she turned and fled. The Quarter Master chased her down the length of the ship, swearing to wring her neck and toss her body to the sharks. Yixing shouted at her to run faster. The adrenaline that had given her the courage to accept the fight now turned into fire that fueled her running. She dodged between other members of the crew and run up to the Quarter Deck with Zhou still following behind her, mad as a diseased dog. Just as she was corner and forced to face her pursuer, a shot rang out above the commotion. There on the Quarter Deck, Luhan and Captain Lau appeared. Luhan lowered the smoking pistol while Lua stepped forward and glared at his men. He looked over at the bloody Quarter Master and at Xiaohe, cowering against the railing on the starboard side. 

“What is this ungodly row unfolding here?” he shouted over them. “Quarter Master Zhou, explain yourself!”

Zhou snorted the blood out of his nose again before facing his captain. 

“Captain!” he shouted. “The White Lion guard here was bold enough to challenge me to a fight and broke my nose, sir!”

“An injury one is likely to sustain in such an engagement,” Luhan said flatly. Zhou cast him a dirty look. Lau looked at the cowering eunuch with narrow eyes and a frown. 

“Is this true, Eunuch Jun?” Lau asked. Xiaohe fought to find her voice.

“The Quarter Master has unfairly ordered the Prince to scrub the entire ship,” Xiaohe said, speaking with a voice purposely lower than her normal register. 

“You little pissant!” Zhou shouted.

“Quarter Master!” Luhan shouted, and Zhou was forced to look up at the boy. “Have you not been warned before to consult me before doling out punishment to the crew?” 

Xiaohe noticed the Quarter Master’s jaw tightening as he stared up at the young First Officer. He snarled and grudgingly hissed a “yes”. Luhan only nodded in reply. Lau stepped forward, and Yixing noticed the rest of the crew shrinking back as he approached. 

“And what are the lot of you doing just lounging around?” he spoke, venom dripping from every word. “Leaving your posts unattended, letting _my_ ship suffer the effects of your careless inattention? All of you, _get to work this instant_! I want to see scrubs in _every hand_ , and I want this deck swabbed and cleaned until _I can look on it and gaze into the disappointed eyes of my reflected countenance_! Move! All of you, or it’s the islands for you!”

The crew scrambled to their stations, grabbing ropes and mops and scrubs adn buckets. Yixing thought it was safe to assume that the punishment had been lfited. Lau stepped back and was about to march right back into cabin when he paused. He turned and faced Zhou.

“And you, Quarter Master,” Captain Lau said, his voice low. “Clean your face. Get your blood off my ship.”

Lau turned to Xiaohe. Yixing had materialized at her side and was helping her up. The scar on her cheek had opened yet again, but the bleeding was not severe. Lau narrowed his eyes at the prince’s vassal and was again unsettled by the look on the boy’s face. 

“And _you_ ,” he said. “The next time you cause trouble on my ship, the prince will need a new vassal.”

Lau turned swiftly on his heel and went back into his cabin. Luhan remained on the Quarter Deck, shouting orders at the men. Sailing Master Wang was at the helm once more, and Zhou was his way down to the main deck. He wiped at the blood on his face. A broken nose was easy to fix, but something far more permanent and damaging had happened to his pride. Bitterness settled into his soul, and he grew newly angry every time he thought about that White Lion guard. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is my submission to a couple of fanfic writing contests, prompts are "Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly." This story is also inspired by EXO's song "Black Pearl," as well as the story of legendary Chinese pirate, Cheng Shih. She was a certified badass. Also, I have been watching"Go Fighting" and even though I came for Yixing, I stayed for the whole cast's amazing chemistry. You should all watch it if you're a Xingmi.
> 
> It's summer and it would be nice to have a story to work on. Please enjoy! Updates soon!


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